Platts: European gas markets have lost 10 years of growth: Stern
European gas markets have lost over 10 years of growth, with demand back to the levels of the 1990s, Professor Jonathan Stern of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies told the UK House of Lords EU energy subcommittee Wednesday.
He said that "European gas demand has been in freefall" due to economic recession, the growth of renewables, low coal prices and strong gas prices.
There had been "declines in gas demand to levels that we never expected to see," he said, arguing that Europe was seeing more of a "dark age of gas" than the once-predicted "golden age." The International Energy Agency in a 2011 report asked whether the global energy market was entering a "golden age" for gas in which the fuel would take up a bigger share of the global energy mix.
Stern said that the market was "beginning to see the decline of gas in Europe as a whole," although he pointed out that neighboring Turkey, a possible future EU member, was experiencing double-digit growth. MORE