As was the case in 2007, the area that showed the most notable growth in reserves was America, where they grew in total by 9.8%. In the USA alone they actually rose by 12.6%, due mainly to high gas prices over recent years, which have encouraged considerable levels of investment in prospecting activity and the development of gas fields, many of them unviable and ignored when gas prices were lower. Kuwait, Indonesia and Pakistan also re-evaluated their reserves, and the result showed rises of more than 10%.

More than half of the large gas fields discovered this decade have been offshore, many of them in deep waters. The Middle East accounts for a little over 40% of worldwide reserves, followed by the combined countries of the CIS, with around 30%. The Russian Federation has a quarter of all the world’s reserves. Iran and Qatar are in second and third place respectively, and Saudi Arabia, the USA, Abu Dhabi and Venezuela follow them in the reserve table. These seven countries alone account for 68.7% of all the world’s natural gas reserves.

Broad hopes are being expressed in this area. This is not surprising, given that the members of a research programme conducted by the US Geological Department have indicated that the store of natural gas in hydrates exceeds the world’s known reserves of conventional natural gas.

Established gas reserve figures at the end of 2008 placed the resource at 96% of world oil reserves. This would ensure a world natural gas supply for around 62 years, based solely on the reserves available at currently known fields.