Gas prices are difficult to break, and gas consumption continues to improve

From the perspective of the global demand side of natural gas, we believe that gas demand will show a long-term growth trend. On the one hand, global economic activities are gradually recovering from the pandemic, and energy demand continues to rise. On the other hand, the pressure of carbon emission reduction has led to the inclination of national energy policies to the use of clean energy, and the potential of switching from coal and oil to natural gas has been greatly exploited. From a regional perspective, the Asia-Pacific region will be the main driver of future gas demand growth.

The increased demand in Southeast Asian countries is mainly from natural gas power generation. At the same time, the rapid increase in demand also makes the gap between supply and demand balance in the Asia-Pacific region gradually expand. In addition, there will be a significant increase in gas demand in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Iraq are looking to invest in gas-fired power generation projects, while countries such as Iran are increasingly focusing on petrochemicals projects. After taking the above factors into consideration, the global demand for natural gas will continue to increase in 2021-2023, and the demand for natural gas will reach 39,755, 40,718 and 4,169.9 billion cubic meters, respectively, an increase of 4.05%, 2.37% and 2.41%. Natural gas demand in 2021 is expected to return to pre-pandemic 2019 demand levels.