By 2020, China's demand for natural gas us expected to reach 210-250 billion cubic meters, Liu Xiaoli,deputy director of the Energy Economy and Development Strategy Research Center under Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) made these remarks at the 3 Asia-Pacific LNG International Conference.

    Liu predicts that by 2020, China's total energy demand will reach four billion tons of standard coal. By then, if natural gas makes up 8-10 percent of the primary energy consumption, China will need about 210-250 billion cubic meters of natural gas before the demand can bemet. By 2030, if natural gas makes up 10 percent of primary energy consumption, China will need about 350 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

    The Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta and the Bohai-ring economic circle are major natural consuming areas, accounting forover 60 percent of China's total natural gas consumption.

    As for supply, China's natural gas production capacity will be around 150 billion cubic meters by 2020, which can by no means meet the consumption demand. China will import natural gas and LNG to fill the supply gap.

    According to Liu, China's natural gas market has presented eight features:

    -- It has developed rapidly, with both production and consumption growing at two-digit numbers since 2002, and the growth even reached 20 percent in 2007.

    -- The consumption structure of natural gas has changed greatly, shifting from mainly industrial production to diversified uses. Gas supply in large and medium-sized cities is also expanding.

    -- Natural gas supply is expanding from neighboring area to other regions. By the end of 2006, 40 percent of the natural gas are across-region supplied on China's natural gas market.

    -- Supply pipes are forming a network. The 8 pipelines across China are forming a regional natural gas supply network.

    -- Natural gas import is increasing. China started to import LNG in 2006, and imported three million tons in 2007, accounting for 6percent of the country's natural gas import as a whole.

    -- Compared with international market, natural gas price is comparatively low in China, which has become a major obstacle to development of the country's natural gas market.

    -- China has accelerated the pace of natural gas pricing reform,and raising of gas prices for industrial use at the end of 2007 is an important move of the reform.

    -- The proportion of natural gas in primary energy is only 3 percent in China at present, as against 24 percent in the world; and the proportion of per capita consumption of natural gas in China is only 10 percent of the international average level. All these indicate that development potentials of China's natural gas market are huge.

    Statistics provided by China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association show that China produced 69.31 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2007, up 23.1 percent year on year. The country's natural gas output is expected to reach 76 billion cubic meters in 2008.