Natural Gas and LNG Supply/Demand Trends in Asia Pacific and Atlantic Markets

This paper discusses a portion of the outcome of a study undertaken by the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan (IEEJ) on commission from the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry under the project title of FY2007 Research for Promotion of Natural Gas Development and Utilization (Study of Natural Gas Supply and Demand Trends in Asia Pacific and Atlantic Markets). The scope of the above study included a fixed-point observation survey on the on-going status of countries that are either exporting or importing LNG as well as trends in the LNG markets, which potentially may have an impact on Japans natural gas supply and demand situation. In the following sections, an overview will be presented in sequence on the natural gas supply and demand situation, natural gas trading, the LNG chain, and LNG supply and demand balance.