Abstract:
Since the shale gas revolution in the United States, unconventional natural gas began to flow into the global natural gas market, the past separated natural gas market pattern will be gradually broken.The increasing competition in the market, the enhancement of the market liquidity and the increasing bargaining power of the natural gas importing countries mean that the international natural gas market is moving towards integration.Technical progress and policy support promote the global unconventional natural gas supply to grow continuously:the United States has developed the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technology, continuous technical research makes the increase of development efficiency and decrease of costs, the United States has transformed from natural gas importing country to exporting country; Australia is actively exploring floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) technology, whose liquefied natural gas export capacity will be ranked first in the world by 2020; in China, the development of shale gas technology makes the cost of exploration began to decline, China has become the world’s third country to achieve shale gas industrial production.Other countries such as Mexico, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, South Africa and Poland are also actively following the unconventional natural gas exploration and development.Although the global natural gas market is relatively sluggish in recent years, and some unconventional natural gas development processes encountered varying degrees of difficulties in economy, technology, environment and policy, the experience shows that technological progress, reasonable operating models, favorable policy incentives and effective capital reorganization and integration are able to successfully avoid negative effects coming from the situation of global natural gas market.The momentum of global unconventional natural gas development is still strong.