The world's plentiful gas supply sources, continued technological innovation, the desire for less carbon intensive fuels, and the need for cleaner air in urban areas, will ensure a significant increase in the use of natural gas as an energy source. The resulting Gas Economy will be supplied from a truly global market consisting of large gas reservoirs geographically spread but linked to consumers by a range of technologies.
The development of a "syngas" hub at the centre of a Gas to Product (GTP) business will yield significant value addition and will require the development of new technologies that both reduce cost and lend themselves to intensive process integration.
We are working hard on many fronts to make GTP technologies, particularly low-cost syngas play their part. We are aggressively pursuing this objective with our GTL Test Facility programme in Alaska, and in high-risk, highly leverage breakthrough R&D programmes such as the OTM (Oxygen Transport Membrane) alliance.
Ultimately we are aiming to move beyond syngas to the direct conversion of methane to chemicals and fuels. To this end we have made major commitment supporting R&D efforts at the world leading universities of Berkeley, Caltech in the US and Tsinghua and Dalian in China. 1.0 The Gas Throughout most of our history, man's primary energy source has been wood. With the onset of Economy severe deforestation in Western Europe, the desire for increased mobility and the development of new technology, early in the 19th century the western world moved from a wood burning economy to a coal burning economy. Early in the 20th century, largely as a result of the need to fuel the emerging mechanised military machine, we moved rapidly from the coal based economy to the oil based economy of today.
It would seem to us that the world is now at the next inflexion point as the global demand growth in primary energy is supplied by gas ahead of oil and coal. For the last ten years or so, gas has taken market share in preference to oil and coal. Whilst it is not possible to be precise about the fossil fuels mix of the future, we can say with some certainty that natural gas will meet many of the mid term demands of society. Plentiful gas supply, continuing technological innovation, the liberalising of energy markets and most importantly, the desire for less carbon intensive fuels all point to an increasing demand for gas. Indeed it is possible to now envision an economy powered principally by BLOCK 3 - - FORUM 18 311
natural gas - The Gas Economy (www.bpgaseconomy.com). As we consider these shifts in fossil fuel mix we can see that we are on a journey towards cleaner, lower carbon energy sources that will eventually take us towards achieving true sustainable development. We see The Gas Economy as a major step