China's natural gas: Resources, production and its impacts

In order to achieve energy consumption targets, and subsequently reduce carbon emissions, China is working on energy strategies and policies aimed at actively increasing the consumption of natural gas–the lowest carbon energy of the fossil fuels, and to enhance the proportion of gas in total primary energy consumption. To do this, it is a necessary prerequisite that China must have access to adequate gas resources and production to meet demand. This paper shows that the availability of domestic gas resources are overestimated by China's authorities due to differences in classification and definitions of gas resources/reserves between China and those accepted internationally. Based on official gas resource figures, China's gas production remains low with respect to the projected demand, and will only be 164.6bcm in 2020, far lower than the 375bcm of forecast demand. The gap between gas production and demand will reach 210.4bcm by 2020. Existing plans for the importation of gas and the development of unconventional gas will not close this gap in the next 10 years, and this situation will therefore present a severe challenge to China's gas security, achievement of targets in improving energy consumption structure and reducing carbon emissions.