Doha: Higher growth of energy consumption in China and India, increasing demand for natural gas to fire power plants in North America, and gas-to-liquid (GTL) fuel production reaching a million barrels per day over the next few years were some of the major issues discussed at the Gas Summit during the last two days.

Terence Thorn, of International Gas Union, highlighted on Sunday how between 50 to 60 per cent of all new power plants in the US were going to use gas between now and 2025.

Concerns about environment and new regulations to monitor air pollution will further boost competitive position of gas for power generation.

In India, growing demand for compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG) were highlighted by experts on Sunday as well as yesterday.

Sanjay Dhawan, from New Delhi-based Tractebel Engineers, in his paper presented yesterday said that in less than a decade CNG had emerged as one of the fastest growing transport fuels in India.

There are currently 270,000 CNG vehicles in the country with 300 CNG stations and the prospects of expansion are bright.

R P Sharma, from India's Reliance Industries, while talking of LNG demand in Asia said China and India were driving the clamour for gas.

India needs to install 60,000 MW of power generation while the figure for China is 80,000 MW and thus, they would need more gas.

He said that currently the share of natural gas in primary energy consumption in China is around three per cent, far less than the world average.

However, over the coming three to eight years gas consumption is set to grow at a very fast rate.

The 4,200 km East-West gas pipeline was completed last year-end and the upcoming LNG terminal at Guangdong is likely to be completed by the middle of this year. The terminal in Fujian, on the other hand, is to be ready in 2008.

At the post-lunch session on GTL yesterday , Qatar Petroleum's Mohamed Fawzi Shreidi talked of the three major joint venture GTL projects launched in Qatar at a total cost of over $14bn.

Oryx project (Sasol and QP joint venture to produce 34, 000 bpd of green fuels) is expected to go on stream in a few months from now, he said.

By 2020, GTL production may increase substantially but it would not be able to make any impact on the demand and prices of crude since its share in the overall oil production would be minimal.

Duncan Seddon, from Duncon Seddon Associates, Australia, talked of small-scale GTL projects that could use flared gas to produce GTL fuels in small quantities (200 barrels a day, for instance) at very little capital cost.

The three-day Gas Summit concludes at Hotel Intercon here today.

Source: http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=Business_News&subsection=Local+Business&month=February2006&file=Business_News2006022174650.xml