Shell Ousted as No.3 Gas Producer in 2015
Royal Dutch Shell was displaced by Petrochina as the world's third largest gas producer in 2015, according to research by analysts at French bank Societe Generale (SocGen) released on April 6.
For nine years now the bank has published its rankings and until 2014 the top gas producers remained the same: Gazprom, ExxonMobil and Shell. In 2015 Gazprom remained the undisputed leader with a 12% worldwide market share, despite reducing its production to 418bn m3, from 444bn m3 in 2014. Petrochina, Novatek and Rosneft entered SocGen's rankings in 3rd, 5th and 7th places - also pushing BP from 4th to 8th place.
However with the Shell-BG merger completed earlier this year, in 2016 Shell plus BG should move to second place ahead of Exxon, said SocGen's senior gas and LNG analyst Dr Thierry Bros.
He noted that Norway on April 5 increased the production quota for its biggest field, Troll, to 33bn m3 for the 12 months starting October 2016, indicating that both Norway and Russia intend to defend their European market share prior to the arrival of US LNG.
Mark Smedley