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Ten Year Network Development Plan 2015
7.5 Europe needs to enlarge its
supply portfolio
The Supply chapter investigates the possible evolution
of indigenous production and import sources. The
background of each source and the rationales of each
scenario used in the assessment have been further
developed with a special attention on LNG.
From an overall perspective the supply adequacy risks to become tighter along the
time horizon and the Intermediate supply scenarios of the considered sources could
no longer be sufficient to balance demand.
The main driver of such tight situation is the clear downward trend of indigenous
production when compar ed to gas demand evolution. The large-scale development
of new sources being conventional or shale gas together with biogas could strongly
mitigate the decrease and thus limit the need of new imports.
Under current perspective the expected gas from North Africa, the Caspian region
and potentially Middle-East will have mostly a regional influence and need stronger
market and political signals to be of European relevance. At the same time Norwe-
gian pipe gas export to Europe will certainly start to decline as early as 2025. Such
decrease could be mitigated by the connections of Norwegian Barents Sea fields to
the existing offshore network. However, this would also require strong signals from
the European market.
In absence of such signals these producers might export gas to the global LNG mar-
ket and will not support the diversification of the European gas supply. This would
leave Europe mainly with Russian gas and LNG to compensate the strong decrease
of European production. In such case Europe would be in the difficult situation of
having limited control on the price of imported gas.
Such perspective should not be perceived as irreversible as sufficient gas reserves
exist in European and surrounding regions to ensure a more diversified supply. Eu-
rope can benefit from those if it sends the appropriate message about the role of gas
in the EU energy mix.