Collaboration between producers and consumers key to gas market recovery

On the second day of Gastech Virtual Summit, the new Secretary General of the International Energy Forum (IEF), Joseph McMonigle, gave a keynote address looking at the importance of collaboration between producers and consumers.

McMonigle opened by saying: "The focus on collaboration between producers and consumers is timely and critical to accelerating the natural gas market recovery. The world economy needs it, Climate Sustainable Development Goals need it, and to prevent a setback on energy access by the world's poorest, we also need it."

He added: "The IEF is committed to helping facilitate this collaboration. It is a role we already play with IEF ministers, industry leaders, and international organizations, and we've seen how it fosters greater global energy security, market transparency, and smart energy transitions. The spread of COVID-19 and the attempts to suppress it have been a shock to the global economy, but we can't know the duration of the pandemic."

The new Secretary General believes that strengthening collaboration between producers and consumers will "help all stakeholders seize the opportunities that affordable, readily accessible, and clean natural gas technologies offer for swift and sustainable economic recovery."

"Producers and consumers will adjust strategies to absorb COVID-19 impacts and overcome the crisis," argues McMonigle, "In response to the slowdown of international gas trade and the downward convergence among regional gas price markers, exporters will add flexibility to long term contracts to improve their competitive edge. While importers will increase their positions in growth economies, both stand to benefit from the windfall created by greater commoditisation of natural gas markets, accelerated transitions from coal to gas, and deeper integration of renewables."

McMonigle noted that even amid efforts to overcome COVID-19 impacts, challenges remain in meeting climate clean air and sustainable development goals.

"Doing so will continue to be linked to the use of natural gas technologies. These technologies can accelerate fuel switching and create synergies to integrate renewables, green gas, hydrogen, and CO2 solutions. This will help meet the objective of net-zero emissions that the Green Deal and the circular carbon economy envisioned by the European Union and the G20 respectively."