The above graph shows Natural Gas consumption from 1994 through 2019. Over that period Natural Gas consumption has almost doubled from just over 2,000 billion cubic meters aka 2 Trillion cubic meters consumed in 1994 to just shy of 4 Trillion cubic meters in 2019. Even more telling the first half of this increase took from 1994 to 2008, a span of 14 years. The second half of the climb from 2009-2019 added another Trillion cubic meters in a single decade. For those more comfortable with the American habit of using Cubic Feet 1 Trillion cubic meters is a little over 35.3 Trillion cubic feet.
Given this rapid and still growing Natural Gas consumption it is hard to see how we can keep feeding our consumption habits indefinitely. Sure simple math says the classic "At todays consumption rate we will have Natural Gas abundance for 250 years!". The problem is, the math is not so simple because consumption is not only growing, the growth rate is accelerating. The only region showing an absolute decrease in Natural Gas consumption over the last 24 years has been Europe, and that has been mostly due to the fact that Western Europe which does the majority of consuming gas has to import much of what they burn at prices significantly higher than what people and industry in North America pay. At the same time China has not only been increasing domestic consumption they have greatly increased their imports from Russia via LNG shipping and a new just opened pipeline. As I understand it the Chinese and Russians have a long term contract price which made it worth building the pipeline. Because of the contract China has a known price for that portion of their consumption making it easier to resist price hikes from North American LNG exporters.
RT News wrote: China has brought the middle section of the China-Russia East natural gas pipeline into operation. It is connected to the Power of Siberia gas pipeline from Russia that will deliver blue fuel to northern China.
According to the state-run China Oil & Gas Piping Network Corp (PipeChina), the 1,110km section of the pipeline will stimulate the development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the country’s main manufacturing area, by increasing gas supply by 27 million cubic meters per day.
27 Million cubic meters a day is 9.855 Billion cubic meters a year, a significant increase in anyone's ledger.
https://www.rt.com/business/508524-chin ... e-siberia/