“As we enter the new millennium we are also entering a new era for the energy industry – the gas era”.
Everett Gibbs, Managing Director, Natural Gas Industry Services, Arthur Andersen

While experts differ on exact numbers, the consensus is that demand will continue to increase for many years to come, based upon usage factors that are currently in place and those that are known to be coming on line soon.

“The demand for natural gas will reach about 30.7 TCF (trillion cubic feet) in 2015, but gas production will only reach 24.8 TCF.”
Source: Independent Producers Association of America

“Natural gas consumption is expected to reach 34.7 TCF by 2020 … natural gas production is expected to increase to [only] 29 trillion cubic feet by 2020.”
Source: Energy Information Administration, U.S. Government

“Natural gas demand is expected to grow by 50% by 2020, up to 33.6 quads from 22 quads in the 2000/2001 time frame.”
Source: Fueling the Future Update, the American Gas Foundation. [Note: A quad is a quadrillion (1,000 trillion) British Thermal Units, a standard unit of measuring energy.]

To meet the expected growth, huge new reserves of gas will have to be developed. A recent report, Gas Trends 2000, published jointly by Arthur Andersen and Cambridge Energy Research Associates, stated that the growth in demand “will test natural gas supplies available throughout North America” and in order to meet demand, the North American gas industry will have to find and develop as much as 300 trillion cubic feet of new gas reserves during the next 10 years. This amount is equal to the entire known reserves now in existence in North America!

To meet projected demand, “operators will have to be drilling at the rate of 17,523 gas wells a year by 2010, and 23,434 gas wells by 2020 in the lower 48 states. Those numbers compare to 10,268 lower 48 wells drilled in 1999.”
Source: Information Administration, U.S. Government

To discover and develop these reserves will require huge amounts of capital. "The investment required to meet the demand for natural gas will be on the order of $4 trillion to $6 trillion over the next decade.”
Dr. Michael J. Economides, Professor, Chemical Engineering,
University of Houston