Qatar sees peak natural gas demand only in 2040

One of the world's largest exporters of liquefied natural gas (LNG), Qatar, expects global natural gas demand to peak sometime around 2040, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing a Qatar Petroleum bond prospectus it had seen. According to Qatar's state giant, global natural gas demand has two decades left to grow, unlike the International Energy Agency (IEA) which warned in its Net Zero by 2050 report last month that the world was in a net zero scenario -Emissions by 2050 will not require new oil and gas field developments beyond those sanctioned this year. According to the IEA's net zero vision, natural gas consumption should peak around the mid-2020s and decrease by an average of more than 5 percent per year in the 2030s. In the 2040s, the decline in demand is then to be slowed because more than half of the world's natural gas would be used to produce hydrogen with carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) in 2050. That net-zero scenario would also mean LNG trade would decrease by 60 percent between 2020 and 2050 and gas transport through pipelines would decrease by 65 percent, the agency said. The IEA's Stated Policies Scenario (STEPS), which examines the consequences of existing and planned policies for the energy sector, sees an increase in natural gas demand from 3,900 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2020 to 4,600 bcm in 2030 and 5,700 bcm in 2050. According to the Qatar Petroleum prospectus viewed by Bloomberg, the Gulf State does not see any slowdown in LNG trade in the near future. The company assumes that the LNG market will grow by around 3.6 percent annually through 2040 and will continue to grow after 2040.