Iakovos Alhadeff: The Map of the Natural Gas

The following map from the Russian news agency Sputnik shows the larger natural gas importers. With blue you can see imports through pipeline networks, and with green imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) through special ships. The larger exporter of gas through pipelines is Russia and the largest exporter of LNG is Qatar. The map refers to 2010. The circles show the largest exporters of natural gas i.e. Russia, Canada, Norway etc.

Map 1 (Sputnik News)

http://sputniknews.com/infographics/20100426/158748785.html

Note that the list of the top producers is different from the list of top exporters, because some countries produce a lot and consume a lot i.e. USA, and some others produce a lot but do not consume that much i.e. Russia. Obviously this is something that has to do with the size of the economy.

At the following map from the Financial Times you can see the largest importers of natural gas in 2011, after the nuclear accident of Fukushima (Japan). Now Japan is the top importer of expensive LNG. The table also shows the top exporters. You can see that the United States is included in the list of exporters, because the US exports gas to Mexico and Canada, when this is more convenient geographically, but the US imports far more from these two countries in oil and gas.

Map 2 (Financial Times)

http://im.ft-static.com/content/images/f3b16110-b5ae-11e2-a51b-00144feabdc0.img?width=564&height=264&title=&desc=

At the following map from Indexmundi you can see the top importers of gas in 2013 (1^st January 2014). You can see Russia and the Netherlands in the list, because even though they are among the top exporters they also import gas i.e. Russia from Turkmenistan and the Netherlands from UK and Norway

Image 3 Indexmundi