Natural Gas Supply Security Research Articles

A methodology to determine the target reliability of natural gas pipeline systems based on risk acceptance criteria of pipelines

The reliable operation of the natural gas pipeline system is directly related to natural gas supply security, and it is vital to determine the target reliability of the natural gas pipeline system when assessing whether the system is reliable. In this study, a methodology to determine the target reliability of natural gas pipeline system based on the risk acceptance criteria of pipelines is proposed, and the methodology consists of three parts. Firstly, the risk acceptance criteria of the natural gas pipelines are determined based on the existing standards. Secondly, the failure consequence model of natural gas pipelines considering the pipeline properties and surroundings is developed, and the corresponding allowable pipeline failure probabilities are calculated according to the risk theory. Finally, the evaluation model of the gas supply reliability for natural gas pipeline systems considering the unit’s failure and hydraulic characteristics is developed, and the target reliability of natural gas pipeline systems is calculated by employing the allowable pipeline failure probabilities. Furthermore, a real natural gas pipeline system is employed to determine its target reliability, and the target value is compared with the actual value of the gas supply reliability. Based on the compared results, the corresponding measure to improve the gas supply reliability is proposed.

Modeling World Natural Gas and Crude Oil Trade Networks

World energy security is sensitive to stable energy environment and geopolitics that depend on inter-regional energy trade strategies. However, this study uses the network connectedness measures of Diebold-Yilmaz to find the trade cooperation/competition preference for non-renewables' security development. To this end, the dynamic asymmetries of weighted spillover effects of natural gas and crude oil trade flow components are analyzed throughout world trade networks before- and after the sharp fall in crude oil prices. The results exhibit that natural gas and crude oil trade networks experience asymmetric- and time-varying behavior in response to transitory- vs. permanent components as well as positive- vs. negative shocks pre-and post- sharp fall in crude oil prices. Specifically, the natural gas and crude oil trade networks show a lesser degree of integration after 2014. Moreover, the natural gas trade network represents more (less) weighted sensitivity to short-term fluctuations (long-term trend) than the crude oil trade network pre-and post- 2014. As the other comparative result, a higher (lower) degree of integration is detected in the crude oil trade network in response to the positive (negative) shocks compared to the natural gas trade network pre-and post- 2014. Therefore, a lower level of cooperation preference among regions is proposed in the natural gas and crude oil trade networks in response to a sharp fall in crude oil prices. Also, decisions about energy conservation, environmental protection, and protection of strategic resources can affect a region's natural gas and crude oil supply and demand security.

Pipeline Availability Limits on the Feasibility of Global Coal-to-Gas Switching in the Power Sector.

Coal-to-gas switching in the power sector, as happening in the U.S., has been a key driver of near-term greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Can this success be replicated around the world? Here, we explore the limits of a global, plant-level, coal-to-gas transition arising from pipeline availability constraints. Globally, only 43% of coal capacity is within 14 km of a nearby pipeline, the median distance for recent coal-to-gas conversions. Furthermore, plant-to-pipeline distance distributions vary widely-only 30% of coal capacity in India is within 14 km of a nearby pipeline. Most global coal fleets are in the intermediate space of balancing two competing interests-having a young coal fleet with high "avoided" emissions potential through coal-to-gas switching but without access to low-cost gas resources. A global stocktake based on coal fleet age, pipeline access, and natural gas supply security suggests that a coal-to-gas transition in the power sector is unlikely to be a universal climate solution.

OIL SUPPLY SECURITY IN CROATIA

The occurrences on the global energy market, increased market instability and the increasingly significant role of geopolitics in energy supply, continually impact the energy supply security which represents the main postulate of the energy politics, as well as a criterion of its successfulness. Assurance of an uninterrupted oil and gas supply is the basic task of each national energy policy. Possibilities and conditions of the supply of primary energy sources, among which oil and natural gas are by far the most important energy sources in relation to their share in energy consumption, and as regards their strategic importance, these represent the basis for assurance of oil and natural gas supply security within the national energy supply. Oil supply security in Croatia is directed towards determining the critical energy supply infrastructure from the viewpoint of energy supply security, towards creating a system for continued oil supply security analysis and monitoring, acting in critical supply situations and towards an elaboration of measures for prevention and amortization in cases of endangerment of energy supply security.

Measuring the natural gas supply security performance of China's natural gas suppliers: A comprehensive framework using FAHP-Entropy-PROOTHEE method

The increasing dependence on foreign natural gas has brought severe challenges to China's natural gas supply security. Hence, choosing secure and reliable natural gas suppliers is crucial. This paper first proposes a comprehensive evaluation framework for the natural gas supply security of natural gas suppliers from two aspects: suppliers' own factors and the interaction factors between importers and suppliers based on the risk factors of the natural gas supply chain. On this basis, the PROOTHEE model based on the combination weight method is introduced to measure the supply security performance of China's 15 natural gas suppliers from 2015 to 2019. The results show that the supply security performance of China's natural gas suppliers varies greatly and the gap widened. Australia, Russia and the United States are the top three countries in terms of the overall supply security. Qatar, Norway, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia and Uzbekistan show moderate supply security. Oman, Papua New Guinea, Trinidad and Tobago and Nigeria demonstrate poor supply security. Most suppliers have medium and low supply security and China's natural gas imports from suppliers do not match their supply security levels to some extent, which results in China's natural gas imports facing a relatively high supply risk. Considering risk controllability, China should focus more on interaction factors, especially to strengthen energy diplomacy.

Policy selection based on China's natural gas security evaluation and comparison

China's energy policy increasingly emphasizes reducing coal consumption and increasing the proportion of natural gas, which has an impact on natural gas security. Although natural gas import dependence is an important index, it is only a dimension reflecting the security status of natural gas supply and demand. This paper comprehensively studies the long-term and short-term natural gas security from the perspective of supply and demand and the external environment by using annual and monthly data based on the principal component analysis method, identifying the main factors affecting natural gas supply and demand security. It is found that in 1992–2017, China's natural gas security curve is U-shaped, and at the same time, the fluctuation of natural gas supply and demand between different months in a year cannot be ignored. Further, we compare the natural gas security of China and that of the United States. It shows that China's comprehensive score of natural gas supply and demand risk is significantly higher than that of the United States. Based on these findings, this paper suggests corresponding policy implications to enhance China's natural gas security.

Analysis of Electricity and Natural Gas Security. A Case Study for Germany, France, Italy and Spain

This work aims to present an analysis of electricity and natural gas supply security in the four European Union countries with the highest level of consumption, namely Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. The goal of the study is to use and adapt a set of 22 indicators for estimating the level of energy security. The evaluation of an index called “Energy Security Level”, measuring the overall energy security, is performed for the period 2006–2018 in order to compare its evolution in each of the analyzed countries. The application of the proposed indicator system demonstrates which measures weakened or strengthened energy security in the past. The analysis of the energy security level demonstrates that Germany and France perform better than Italy and Spain in terms of energy security assurance. The main factors for these differences are the rich energy mix for Germany and the massive presence of nuclear power in France. These two elements make German and French energy systems more resilient than the Italian and Spanish ones. The results of sensitivity and uncertainty analysis demonstrate that the initial values of indicator weights have low impact on the uncertainty of energy security level estimations.

Evaluating natural gas supply security in China: An exhaustible resource market equilibrium model

The continuous growth of natural gas demand in China has brought about supply security from the insufficient supply of domestic resources and ever-increasing dependency on natural gas imports. A multi-agent game framework for supply security is proposed to investigate availability, accessibility, and affordability along natural gas industry and supply chain. In this framework, an exhaustible resource market equilibrium model based on mixed complementary programming (MCP) is developed, taking into account the dynamic depletion of the remaining recoverable reserves, to evaluate the gas supply security in China. The results indicate the supply security of China's natural gas is far from optimistic from 2020 to 2049, and the newly-increased recoverable reserves of 200 bcm/a are required to meet the expanding scale of the natural gas market. However, it will face supply risks with lower Reserve-Production ratios after 2030 and higher dependencies after 2040. Therefore, the equilibrium model is used to simulate for seeking feasible solutions to ensure the natural gas supply security from three aspects: market structure, discount rate, and resources tax. Several combinational strategies suitable for China's natural gas supply security are suggested according to the market structure, natural gas import, discount rate, and resources tax for building a more diversification system of natural gas supply, establishing an efficient allocation system of the natural gas market and setting up an effective strategic stockpile system of natural gas resources.

Assessment of natural gas supply security in Asia Pacific: Composite indicators with compromise Benefit-of-the-Doubt weights

As the global natural gas consumption cores shifts eastward, the natural gas import market competition in the Asia Pacific is increasingly intensified. This paper presents a composite index for assessing the natural gas supply security to identify the challenges and provide a benchmark for policy analysis in Asia Pacific countries. The index is based on a comprehensive set of eight indicators including resource risk, structural risk, dependence risk, geopolitical risk, market risk, liquidity risk, infrastructure risk and transportation risk. To aggregate individual indicator into one composite index, the linear and data-driven Benefit-of-the-Doubt model is adopted to estimate the importance of various sub-indicators with compromise weights. Results reveal that the gas supply security in Asia Pacific natural gas importing countries presents a general decline-up-down trends. Furthermore, the gas supply security in China, India and Malaysia have fluctuated widely, the Japan and Korea are very close and stable, while the gas supply security of each country has gradually converged during the observation period. The appraisal method and corresponding findings could provide strategic options for gas importers with different characteristics and have important implications for exploring regional joint emergency mechanism and improve regional competitiveness.

Developing natural-gas-supply security to mitigate distribution disruptions: A case study of the National Iranian Gas Company

Stable natural-gas supply and reduction of distribution disruptions play a crucial role in the socio-economic wellbeing and support sustainable development. The socio-technical nature of disruption compels implementation of an interdisciplinary perspective using a lens of supply-chain management. In this manner, disruption drivers are present in the internal, network, and environmental categories. Further, a quantitative method is necessary to evaluate and minimize the occurrence and effect of disruptions by promoting capability development. Therefore, natural-gas-supply security (NGSS), as a hierarchical and multi-dimensional construct, is considered to develop these capabilities. The effect of NGSS on mitigating gas-distribution disruptions, which is based on the contingency theory, is investigated to shed light on what a company should do to mitigate disruptions. Structural equation modeling is also applied to analyze the data collected through a survey questionnaire in Tehran Province Gas Company. The results show that NGSS, in the context of disruption mitigation at the company level, consists of three main dimensions: availability, infrastructure, and governance. The findings suggest that availability can be achieved by not only a sufficient supply but also efficient energy use. Further, behavioral and technological changes are essential. In addition, policies and regulations are not sufficient to develop governance; thus, structure, systems, and monitoring should be emphasized. The conclusion of this study provides an empirical basis and some insights into capabilities that aim to mitigate disruptions. These capabilities can provide reinforcement to transparency, trust, risk-management culture, and integrated supply–demand approach to prevent fluctuations in gas availability, thus promoting infrastructure that deals with environmental sustainability and subsequently addresses disruptions.

Urban Natural Gas Supply Security Evaluation: A Systematic Perspective

As the main power source, the stable supply of energy is important for urban sustainable development. It is necessary to systematically evaluate the security level of urban energy supply, based on which the key influencing factors can be investigated and then the energy supply security can be improved. Ecological network analysis, a helpful systematic analysis tool, was introduced to evaluate the level of urban energy supply security, with the merit of connecting different components within a holistic network system. Such indicators as system sustainability and weights of different components were calculated to analyze the characteristics of energy supply system based on information and structure analysis. The established model and indicators based on ecological network analysis were applied by choosing the natural gas supply system in Chongqing city as the case. The results show that the level of natural gas supply security in Chongqing generally increased during 1997–2012. And the natural gas production sector, consumption sector, and domestic suppliers outside the city caused greater impact on the natural gas supply system than other components during the study period. Based on a few scenario analysis, certian suggestions were put forward to improve the security level of natual gas supply in Chongqing.

Defining a composite index for measuring natural gas supply security - The Croatian gas market case

This paper presents a robust composite index aimed to measure natural gas supply security. The Composite index (CI) includes the following indicators important for natural gas supply security: Energy Import Dependency Index, Energy Intensity, Gross Inland Consumption, Index of National Economy Dependence on Natural Gas, Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and Shannon-Wiener Index. The aggregated CI incorporates the normalized values of the aforementioned indicators and their weighted factors. A higher value of the CI indicates a lower level of natural gas supply security and vice versa. An analysis relevant for defining natural gas supply security for Croatia, over the period 2001–2015, is conducted in this research. The CI reached the maximal value of 0.58 in 2001, and the minimal value of 0.37 in 2015. These values indicate the increase of natural gas supply security in Croatia in the considered period. A favorable CI of 0.30 could be achieved in the year 2019 with the precondition of an operational LNG terminal on the island of Krk in the North Adriatic. This means that natural gas supply security in Croatia would increase significantly in 2019.

European Union energy supply security: The benefits of natural gas imports from the Eastern Mediterranean

This paper analyzes the potential of Eastern Mediterranean offshore natural gas discoveries to increase EU natural gas supply security. It presents an overview of, the status quo of EU-28 natural gas import dependency, the efforts to increase energy security through various measures, and the challenges to supply diversification. It further provides an analysis of the energy and offshore resource sectors of Egypt, Israel, Cyprus and Lebanon. The paper presents projections of domestic natural gas consumption needs for the years 2012–2042 and results show that potentially large quantities will be available for exports. An empirical model is used to analyze the capital and transmission costs for exporting gas to Europe via the East Med pipeline. The East Med pipeline project is discussed in the broader context of other regional supply options as well as potential U.S. LNG exports to Europe. The paper concludes that the East Med pipeline, which has been classified as a project of Common Interest by the EU, should receive policy priority as its benefits in terms of security of supply go beyond those that can be captured in a competitive market, and the positive externalities that it provides justify a ‘security premium’.

Evaluating China's natural gas supply security based on ecological network analysis

Growing role of natural gas as an effective policy choice has kindled the discussions surrounding the security of its supplies in the policy circles of the Chinese government. This study tries to evaluate China's natural gas supply security and employs a system-oriented modelling approach namely, Ecological Network Analysis (ENA) to integrate all the critical compartments of China's natural gas supply system. Several ENA indicators are constructed, which disclose that domestic natural gas production contributes significantly to China's natural gas supply system in comparison with all the external natural gas suppliers. In addition, the variations in a system stability indicator suggest that diversification of external natural gas suppliers has a positive influence on China's natural gas supply security. Furthermore, the results revealed that China's natural gas supply security policy is orchestrated on following features 1) to increase the investment in the upstream natural gas production sector to boost its domestic production in order to reduce its import requirements and 2) to diversify the external natural gas supplies by sources and routes to reduce the level of the economic and supply disruption related risks.

Assessing the stability of the LNG supply in the Asia Pacific region

The Asia Pacific (AP) region has experienced huge growth in the use and trade of LNG during the last decade, which is a reflection of the overall region’s policies towards low-carbon development. Japan, South Korea, Mainland China, Taiwan and India (JKCTI) are the top five importers and consumers of LNG in the world. A holistic network system stability indicator, considering various risk factors, has been constructed based on ecological network analysis (ENA) to assess the stability of LNG supplies in each of the JKCTI countries and in the overall AP region. The research revealed that the increase in the number of LNG suppliers and improvements (higher values) of the risk factors have enhanced the status of the stability of LNG supplies. A comparative ranking of the overall levels of natural gas supply security was estimated and found that Mainland China is the leader within the AP region, followed by India, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Furthermore, the reliability of the LNG suppliers in terms of sharing their maximum LNG supplying capacity in each of the JKCTI countries and AP region was also estimated.

A systematic method of evaluation of the Chinese natural gas supply security

As a relatively clean energy, natural gas will be increasingly in demand to meet short-term low-carbon targets. The gap between the demand and supply of natural gas will be increasingly scrutinized, which highlights the significance of natural gas supply security. Considering the extensive connections among various aspects related to natural gas supply and the complex interactions behind these connections, ecological network analysis was applied to simulate the natural gas supply system in China and systematically measure its overall security level. Network Information Analysis, Structural Analysis, and Utility Analysis were conducted. It is found that the Chinese natural gas supply security increased during 2000–2011. In terms of the influence of different compartments on the whole natural gas supply system, in order from the largest to smallest influence they are: supply sources, consumption sector, refining, and reserve sectors. And the relationships among compartments became stronger in the later stage than that in the earlier stage of the study period. Suggestions on improving China’s natural gas supply security were proposed based on the results and further scenario analysis. The network model developed herein is a new perspective for natural gas supply security assessment, which can be used as guidance for policy making.

All quiet on the eastern front? Disruption scenarios of Russian natural gas supply to Europe

The 2014 Russian–Ukrainian crisis reignited European concerns about natural gas supply security recalling the experiences of 2006 and 2009. However, the European supply situation, regulation and infrastructure have changed, with better diversified import sources, EU member states being better connected and a common regulation on the security of supply has been introduced. Nevertheless, European dependency on natural gas remained high. This paper investigates different Russian natural gas export disruptions scenarios and analyses short- and long-term reactions in Europe. We use the Global Gas Model (GGM), a large-scale mixed complementarity representation of the natural gas sector with a high level of technical granularity with respect to storage and transportation infrastructure. While we find that most of the EU member states are not severely affected by Russian disruptions, some East European countries are very vulnerable. Prioritizing the removal of infrastructure bottlenecks is critical for securing a sufficient natural gas supply to all EU member states.

Investigating the natural gas supply security: A new perspective

This paper assesses the natural gas supply security of 23 importing countries from divergent regions of the world for the period between 2001 and 2013. The indicators used for the study are the volume of imported natural gas, the number of natural gas suppliers, the level of dependency on one country, import dependency, the fragility of supplier countries, and the share of natural gas in primary energy consumption. The method used to establish the supply security index is the PCA (principal component analysis) over the indicators in the model for each country on a yearly basis for the period 2001 to 2013. The dispersed country sample enables the established index to measure the sensitivity of specific natural gas importer countries using a uniform framework. According to the results, the most effective indicators for the measurement of supply security are the number of supplier countries, supplier fragility, and the overall volume of imported gas.

Research on Beijing Safety Guarantee System for Natural Gas Supply

This paper analyzes the basic principles and the main goal of Beijing natural gas supply security system, predicts the supply and demand of natural gas of Beijing in coming years, starting from the facts of Beijing special status and natural gas rapid development. Beijing natural gas supply safety system includes three main aspects: diversification of gas supply, gas supply security early warning systems, gas supply security the government's social responsibility system.

Indicators of security of natural gas supply in Asia

Natural gas has become an increasingly valuable resource and a global commodity. The demand for it has significantly increased. Japan, Korea and Taiwan heavily rely on liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports for their gas supplies from Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Australia and the Middle East. On the other hand, countries like Thailand and Singapore import gas via trans-border pipelines. Gas supply interruptions, volatile gas prices, transportation and distribution bottlenecks, and a growing reliance on imports over longer distances have renewed interest on gas security in Asia. This paper examines the relative vulnerability to natural gas supply disruptions of seven gas-importing countries in Asia for year 2008. Based on four indicators of security of gas supply, a composite gas supply security index is estimated as an overall indication of gas vulnerability for our sample countries. The results demonstrate that there are differences in the values of the overall indicator of gas vulnerability among countries and the assessment is useful in developing an effective strategy of natural gas supply security in countries in the Asian region.