Prospects of Natural Gas Consumption using LMDI-STIRPAT-PLSR Framework

Abstract

Abstract Increasing population and depleting natural gas (NG) reserves may cause NG shortage and it is necessary to balance the supply-demand gap by devising proper policies. This paper investigates the relationship between NG consumption and driving factors using logarithmic mean division index. A stochastic impact of regression for different variables and partial least square regression has been used for model validation and accuracy estimation. Results proved that fossil energy structure and per capita GDP are most influencing factors on NG consumption, followed by non-clean energy structure, energy intensity, and population. Forecasted results suggest that NG consumption would be 42.107 MTOE under the high development scenario which is twice the baseline scenario. It is projected that indigenous NG production will fall from 4 to 2 billion cubic feet/day and demand will increase by 1.5 billion cubic feet/day. Therefore, an optimized strategy is required for a long-term solution to cater this increasing supply-demand.