LNG blooming More so than oil, Birol said demand for liquefied...

LNG blooming
More so than oil, Birol said demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG) would boom.

The IEA chief said that global LNG trade could pass 500 billion cubic metres per day (bcm) by 2023, growing by a third in the coming five years.

Birol said just three countries, Qatar, Australia and the United States, would supply 60 percent of global LNG by 2023.

LNG demand is primarily driven by growth in China, where an anti-pollution programme is driving a massive shift from coal to natural gas.

But demand is also expected to grow fast in Southeast Asia, where Birol said the power sector needed $50 billion of investment by 2040, more than twice the current level, to keep up with consumption.

Despite this growth potential, the LNG sector faces increasing competition from renewables and storage technology, which are cleaner than fossil fuels and becoming much cheaper.

In many countries, Birol said solar power was on track to become the cheapest source of new electricity.