China's Efforts to Meet its Growing Natural Gas Demand

China's demand for natural gas is expected to increase dramatically over the next decade — perhaps rivaling Russia as second only to the United States. China's differences from places like South Korea and Japan, such as its domestic production potential and access to pipelines from the former Soviet Union, will limit Chinese demand for liquefied natural gas, but that demand will grow nonetheless. Thus, China and other Asian countries will continue working together to find ways to drive down liquefied natural gas prices in Asia. In the longer term, the natural gas distribution and consumption infrastructure built up over the next decade could be used to metabolize the country's massive shale gas deposits once China masters the technology to extract them, thus massively shifting Beijing's energy security away from foreign sources.