An unprecedented market

摘要

Since international natural gas markets began to develop in the 1960s, gas has been a tremendously successful fuel, with sales growing continuously at an average rate of nearly 4%/y between 1965 and 2007. Until about a year ago, before the current deep and lengthy recession, most analysts had predicted that through 2030 world gas demand would grow at some 2%/y - approximately twice the growth rate of oil. However, the economic downturn upended even the most conservative scenarios. Demand for industrial goods in developed countries has dropped precipitously, hitting energy intensive industries particularly hard. Analysts project automobile manufacturing in Europe to fall by 25% in 2009. Output in the chemical industry, the basis of many industrial value chains, is expected to drop at a similar rate, while output in the steel industry, another large energy consumer, is declining by 30% or more in North America and the European Union (EU).