New Energy World™
New Energy World™ embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low-carbon technologies.
Methane rules: emerging interest in natural gas competitiveness and waste capture
29/10/2025
8 min read
Feature
Gas markets are oversupplying, electricity is straining under AI demand, and methane rules are raising the bar. Together, these forces are rewriting competitiveness in energy, writes Mark Davis FEI, CEO of Capterio, a British company focused on reducing gas flaring.
Enthusiasm for the current energy transition path appears to be wavering. Against this backdrop, motivated by their ‘low-carbon’ credentials and spurred on by the apparently insatiable demands from AI data centres, gas market players are sensing an opportunity. At Gastech (the world’s largest gas conference, held in Milan in September), producers were subtly evolving their narrative. Rightly or wrongly, gas is no longer being vocalised as a ‘bridge’ or a ‘transition fuel’: instead, it is increasingly marketed as a ‘destination fuel’.
In addition to piling into renewables, Europe’s response to high prices and a desire to exit Russian gas is to secure new gas supplies. Conveniently, LNG output is surging (from the US, Qatar, Australia, Canada, Mozambique and elsewhere), adding an additional ~400bn m3 of capacity (or 70%) by the early 2030s, according to analyst Anne-Sophie Corbeau, Global Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy.
At Gastech, the US contingent was present in full force, inking long-term purchasing contracts for their soon-to-double LNG output. It is clear that the US rationale is part politically motivated (Secretary of State for the Interior Doug Burgum noted that the US wants to ‘sell energy to our friends so they don’t have to buy from our adversaries’), but part commercial (eyeing up more than $50bn in annual revenues).