During the 13th Five-Year Plan, China's natural-gas supply and demand maintained a sustainable and rapid growth. Especially in natural-gas market in 2020, the production, supply, storage, and marketing still increased against the trend even under double hits of both COVID-19 and sharp drop of oil price, which was unique in the global gas industry. It was revealed that China's natural-gas market has bright development potential. In order to fulfill the international commitment of carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, China's natural-gas supply and demand will surely maintain a stable growth in the longer period. So, some policies favorable for the stable and sustainable development were proposed after analyzing the problems existed in China's natural-gas supply and demand. Results show that the current natural-gas development policies shall focus on the following aspects; (1) to strengthen the strategic position of natural gas in China's energy structure, (2) to enact "Oil and Gas Law" or "Natural-gas Law" as soon as possible, (3) to promote the construction of gas production, supply, storage, and marketing system and ensure the supply security; (4) to construct the "intelligent" natural-gas reserve system, (5) to deepen the reform of natural-gas price, and (6) to strengthen the market supervision. In conclusion, it is necessary to provide solid policy guarantee, support, and protection for natural-gas development from national level, enhance the principal energy position of natural gas by means of legislation, strength the domestic exploration and development, complete the construction of production, supply, storage, and marketing system continuously, and promote the market-oriented reform, and strength the supervision, so as to ensure the sustainable development of natural-gas supply and demand.

In 2020, an outbreak of COVID-19 and a sharp drop of oil price heavily hit global stably-developing natural-gas market, resulting that gas demand is depressed and gas price especially international spot trading price drops sharply. The global gas market is likely to see a rare negative growth in 2020 and even in 2021. So, from aspects of international gas price, demand and supply, and gas trade contract, some new characteristics and trend of gas market since COVID-19 outbreak were analyzed, including the slump of international gas price, the contract of demand, the sudden reversal of supply, and the rising of international trade volume against the trend, so as to provide reference for China's gas import or production enterprises to formulate measures on domestic gas supply and prepare for gas development strategies. Results show that (1) it is expected that the global gas demand will decline by 4 %-7 % in 2020 and the global LNG demand may decline for the first time in history; (2) the global gas supply exceeds the demand, and the global LNG liquefaction projects suffer lower load, delayed commissioning, and stranded FID, while the signed number of LNG contracts increases against the market, and long-term contracts linked to oil price attract more interest instead; and (3) with hard market supply-demand rebalance, the gas price in the next 10 years will present a“parabolic”trend, i.e., rebounding in 2021, peaking in 2024, falling back in 2027, and various gas price converging around 2030.

After reviewing the development and system reform history of China's natural-gas industry, the influence of established National Petrleum and Gas Pipeline Network Group, Co., Ltd on the industrial development was analyzed, and several concerns and solutions on the sustainable and healthy development of current gas industry were made. Results show that (1) an existing administration pattern is formed gradually in China's natural-gas industry after it experienced one reform of administrative system and another of modern enterprise system. The current reform mode is mainly by oriented market and the main reform concept is "controlling the middle part and releasing both ends", which means controlling the transportation and distribution price and liberalizing the upstream and downstream price. And to establish National Petrleum and Gas Pipeline Network Group , Co., Ltd is right the specific implementation of this concept; (2) after the corporation was found, the planning, construction, and operation of gas infrastructures take a qualitative leap, which may also promote not only market-oriented price reform but also stable gas supply; (3) in order to ensure stable and healthy development of gas industry, the government shall exert its administrative role in a certain period to strengthen the comprehensive coordination and supervision, and prevent the formation of new monopolization; and (4) it is recommended to advance the reform of gas system to taken full consideration of the interests of all parties, effectively help the construction of gas infrastructure, define the peak shaving and supply guarantee responsibility for those supply enterprises, pipeline corporations, governments, and city gas enterprises, implement well the opening of upstream mining right and the support reform of downstream market, solve existing high-price gas consumption, and effectively promote the construction of gas production, supply, storage, and sales system.

Even though with a large amount of natural gas resources, Sichuan - Chongqing area still has very low degree of exploration and development . In order to promote the construction of "Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle" and promote the high-quality economic development of Sichuan-Chongqing area, the exploration and development outlook in 2020 was predicted by analyzing some achievements in 2019 and combining with gas resource potential in Sichuan Basin. Results show that (1) there was about one trillion cubic meters of proved reserves newly found in this area in 2019, which accounts for 70 % of total number in China. Two major gas provinces with the reserves of 1×10¹² m³ were efficiently proved, namely Chuannan shale gasfield and Anyue gasfield; (2) in 2019, there was approximately 500×10⁸ m³ of gas production, about 30 % of total number in China. Shale gas production increased fast, nearly a half more than that in 2018; and (3) it is predicted that the gas exploration and development in Sichuan-Chongqing area in 2020 will get better with fast increase of both proved reserves and production. In conclusion, the gas resources in this area are abundant with great exploration potential, COVID-19 epidemic or low oil price have less impact on the gas exploration and development, and the production will reach a new level of 500×10⁸ m³ in 2020.

Under guidance of national policy on coordinated and stable development, China's natural-gas industry presents a variety of highlights. So, the main economical and technical indicators and the latest progress of China's natural-gas exploration & development, resource supply, market demand, infrastructure construction, and system reform in 2019 were sorted out and analyzed. It's indicated six characteristics in 2019, including that (1) successful exploration occurred frequently and a new record of newly proved reserves was hit; (2) gas production increased steadily, in particular very strongly for shale-gas production; (3) a shift speed of gas imports dropped and a gas external dependence fell; (4) a growth of gas demand slowed down and supply-demand markets were balanced and stable; (5) four major channels importing Russia's gas had been built up completely; and (6) important gas system reforms emerged one after another, and a market-oriented development took a decisive step. It's deemed that, influenced by new coronavirus epidemic, China's natural-gas development will face challenges in 2020, but is overall getting better; the new proved reserves will increase constantly at the peak rate and the shale-gas production will enter a new phase; the imports will rise constantly, but gas price will decline; the supply-demand markets will get loose; and energy metering and pricing may be piloted.

As one major measure in China natural-gas system reform, the National Oil and Gas Pipeline Network Company was officially established. After that, how various links of domestic gas industrial chain will adapt to it and further develop, and how the gas production, supply, storage, and sales situations, along with price mechanisms will change are likely to emerge as focal points. So, some studies were carried out by combining the reform history and experience from foreign gas pipeline operation system with the status and reform direction of domestic gas system. It's indicated that establishing the National Oil and Gas Pipeline Network Company in China is important and has basic conditions. Moreover, it's clearly determined that China natural-gas market system will be reconstructed via this company. In addition, it's deemed that China natural-gas market and industry will be taken to a new development opportunity period. And results show that (1) this company will reconstruct China natural-gas market system from aspects of both supply and demand sides, including one improvement of effective supply for the supply side of natural-gas market based on the sharing of three major infrastructure platforms, and another improvement of effective demand for the demand side based on the sufficient competition of three major market factors; and (2) its establishment will bring new development opportunities to domestic natural-gas market, such as deepening the reform of supply and demand sides to drive domestic gas industry into one stage of market-oriented development, reforming and optimizing five major links (production, supply, storage, transportation, and sales) to promote the healthy and coordinated construction and development of gas production, supply, storage and sales system, and focusing on each link of upstream, midstream, and downstream to promote the high-quality development of whole natural-gas industrial chain.

In order to deeply probe the development situation of China natural-gas supply and demand and their contradictions, and provide more objective reference for scientific making the development plan of domestic natural-gas industry, the situation of global markets was analyzed, and the development history, stage, status, and trend of domestic gas supply and demand were summarized. Furthermore, the scenario prediction was carried out on domestic gas consumption and demand outlook, and availability. In addition, some relevant suggestions were made. Results show that (1) at present, the framework of global natural-gas markets is undergoing great changes, such as the market supply and demand keeping loose, the LNG trade share continuous enlarging, and the interaction among regional markets enhancing, the global markets further favorable for the development of gas import channel and the increase of import volume in China so as to meet a fast increasing of gas demand; (2) under these current situations, future gas availability in China will be not enough, the supply and demand gap will get larger, and its’ necessary to strengthen the interconnection among basic gas supply systems and the construction of trading center due to lower degree of national interconnection; and (3) domestic gas industry is now in the third stage of fast development, and its development compliance is still very strong. And to deal with the contradictions existing in gas industrial development, it’s essential to enhance the top-level design and make the development plan of gas industrial chain in advance.

In 2006, China started LNG import through LNG receiving terminals. Till 2018, it became the largest LNG importer in the world, and each link of LNG industry entered a rapid development period. The current development of LNG industry in China are featured by (1) LNG consumption increases obviously and rapidly; (2) LNG is mainly imported from Australia, Qatar, and Malaysia; (3) “Asian premium” space is reduced significantly, but the CIF of LNG is obviously higher than China current gate price; (4) both loading and unloading capacity of LNG receiving terminals is much lower especially in the peak period; (5) an operation rate of natural-gas liquefaction plants is lower; and (6) in recent years, the development of LNG industry has been supported by better policies owing to the incentive of related national policies. It’s deemed that the fast development of LNG industry is satisfied in demand condition, policy environment, and infrastructure condition. In order to realize the smooth and health development of LNG industry, it’s essential to enhance the construction of natural-gas infrastructure and diversified import systems, impel the third party access to related infrastructure, take multiple measures simultaneously to reduce LNG import price, and promote the market-oriented reform of LNG sales price.

With the rapid growth of natural-gas demand and the continuous increase of external gas dependence degree, the long-term security, continuity, and stability of domestic gas resource supply attract attentions from Chinese Government, and gas supply and consumption enterprises. It's quite important to evaluate the supply risk, identify the main risk point and risk degree, and finally make a plan and countermeasures in advance. So, the key risk factors were identified on the basis of historical data on domestic and foreign gas production, supply and consumption, and development trends, combined with many previous research results. Then, they were rated from two aspects of risk scale and influencing degree by means of quantitative classification and evaluation methods. Finally, several important factors influencing domestic supply risk were pointed out. Results show that (1) six indicators to evaluate the supply risk are selected by virtue of analysis and evaluation, and quantitative rating is carried out on these indicators, indicating that this risk is mainly embodied in terms of lower guarantee degree of gas resources, higher external dependence degree, and excessive concentration on import source leading to greater political risk; and (2) many countermeasures are made, such as, strengthening comprehensive investigation on domestic gas resources, increasing potential evaluation and risk investment analysis on imported gas resource bases, promoting to construct diversified systems of import source, enlarging international cooperation, innovating finance mechanism, and price and reserve mechanism, and intensifying some innovations on geological theories, technologies, and technical equipment.

The paper analyzes the supply and demand, price movement and trend in global natural gas market in 2016, including the development and change of reserves, yield, international trade, consumption and price of natural gas compared with that in last year and regional analysis. In 2016, the global natural gas market had supply exceeding demand generally, the supply and demand under suppression, the strong market supply and low price caused by excessive supply had further deteriorated natural gas exploration and development and natural gas consumption maintained its growth hardly under the effects of many accidental factors such as climate and energy policies. The serious decrease of natural gas reserve and yield in America was the main factor causing global natural gas supply stagflation. Emerging countries in Europe and Asia were the main forces that promoted slight rebound of global natural gas consumption. The change of natural gas trade pattern was the main means that promoted the balance of regional supply and demand of natural gas. Under the relaxed supply environment, the supply became more diversified, the pricing became more market-oriented and the integration process of global natural gas market was further accelerated.

To explore a development path of China’s shale gas industry under the low oil price, the paper compares the development history of shale gas industry of China and America. Through empirical analysis, it is got that oil price has obvious positive influence on shale gas production. The paper also explains the impact to China’s shale gas industry of low oil price and puts forward many suggestions for the development direction of China’s shale gas industry under the energy structure transition, such as establishing a dynamic management database for shale gas resource information, reducing social capital’s entry to barriers, realizing scaled development of Desert areas, setting up a special center for science and technology R&D and innovation, executing dynamic differential subsidy policy for production side and consumption side and increasing environmental tariff including carbon tax.

After the past decade of probing and practice, the construction of China’s underground gas storages has come into a period of rapid development. And it will play more important role in peak shaving or supply ensuring of natural gas in the future. So, based on the status, three goals to promote the development of China’s underground gas storages step by step are presented, containing that (1) recent one is as early as possible to form the working-gas capacity, to realize the diversified investment, and to set up the effective and complete management process and the benefit evaluation system; (2) medium-term one is to gradually form the system of gas storage’s rate available for China’s natural-gas industry, to build up the trading platform for capacity of gas reserves, to perfect the related laws and regulations or supervision mechanisms, and to practise the management mode of three-grade gas reserves; and (3) long-term one is to finally accomplish the fully market-oriented operation and management.

With the haze problem of China becoming more and more serious, new opportunities are provided for the development of natural gas power generation industry. The paper analyzes main problems in the development of Chinese natural gas power generation industry and puts forward measures for all-round development of Chinese power generation industry in the aspects of domesticization of natural gas power generation equipment, reduction of maintenance cost of natural gas power generation equipment, reduction of gas consumption cost of natural gas power generation enterprises and implementation of preferential tax policy and subsidy policy in on-grid price.

From the perspective of “regional energy security”, the current imbalance problem of China's regional energies is summarized by a lot of data, i.e. supply and demand imbalance among regions and imbalance of different kinds of energies in different regions. The causes for such imbalance and the relevant hidden dangers are deeply analyzed; and corresponding adjustment scheme is proposed from the angle of law. According to study, the current problems faced by China's regional energy security shall be adjusted by legal means according to macro-policy method and market rule method, and shall be supervised by enforcement and judicial methods.

Through over ten years' development, LNG industry in China has formed a relatively complete industry chain and stepped into a period of quick development. After describing and summarizing current development situation of LNG industry in China, it is thought that in short term, LND industry in China is still confronted with the problems including limited growth rate of market demands, unordered or repeated construction of LNG terminals and liquefying plants and lack of enforceable rules for third party access to LNG terminals and natural gas pipeline network, while in medium and long term, it will be confronted with problems including slow or lagged expansion of downstream market, failure of full reflection of reserve peak-shaving value, not strong power in LNG pricing in international trade and increasingly escalated contradiction and competition with pipeline gas. Therefore, the paper puts forwards suggestions including performing the function of national level strategy to guide the construction of infrastructures of LNG industry and reasonably regulate the market area of LNG and pipeline gas, introducing rules for third party access to LNG terminals and natural gas pipeline network as soon as quickly to promote private enterprises to participate in competition, enhancing downstream market development and governmental policies support to realize diversification of downstream markets and improving the supply and demand and import flexibility of natural gas by various approaches to lower the import price of LNG.

with the continuous promotion of natural gas reform, relevant national policies are promulgated. But have different provinces issued relevant policies and obtained expected effects? The paper, taking Fujian Province as an example, analyzes the progress of and path for downstream natural gas economic reform and finds it out that affected by market uncertainty and increasing returns to scale, the downstream natural gas economic change in Fujian Province is dependent on technology and system. The reason for dependence on system lies in that the government and gas dealer have same benefits and the definition of dual role and interest appeal become a barrier to the mandatory institutional change by government. The reason for dependence on technology lies in horizontal subadditivity and longitudinal cask effect of gas pipe network. Mutual effects between institutional change and technology selection increase the complexity and difficulty of economic transition. As a result, different provinces have different systems and their infrastructures can hardly be linked, and the optimization of national resources allocation can hardly be realized.

From on a key role of natural gas in the realization of "Chinese dream" of energy environmental goals, this paper analyzes the development situation on the middle and lower reaches of China's natural gas industry and the network operation characteristics and peak demand and means based on the China's natural gas market characteristics during 2020-2035. For further development, this paper also thinks that China's natural gas pipeline network development should be based on the characteristics of natural gas supply and demand and under the permission of both pipe network construction and operation, it can establish the national natural gas pipeline company, which is entrusted with law enforcement, supervision, planning, scheduling functions by government. Then it can build "Sub energy Internet" that combined with grid center and intelligent energy network as soon as possible.

In view of the prominent contradictions between our country's sustained and rapid economic development and clean energy shortage, from the global LNG market status, this paper analyzes the changes of LNG market in recent years and the latest supply and demand changes between the LNG resource and consumer countries, and the international LNG price trend. It also analyzes the feasibility of air supply in some LNG producing countries like Middle East, Asia Pacific, North Africa, Central Asia, Russia, Canada and central and South America region, and thinks that China should implement a more aggressive strategy for overseas LNG development, according to the different countries and regions of the resources and policies, market environment, China can adopt in different strategies. At the same time, it is recommended to focus on the introduction of LNG resources from Iran and Qatar, pay more attention to Algeria, Nigeria, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Russia and other countries of the LNG resources.

The paper gives a review of and evaluation on the trend of the global gas industry and market in 2014, in which, the world’s economy remained in a low growth, less than the expected. In late 2014, the sharp jump of the crude oil price imposed an overwhelming strike on the oil industry. This would inevitably impact on the gas industry: （1）the newly increased proven reserve and growth rate both reached a record low over the past ten years; （2）world’s gas products could barely be kept at a low growth due to the only contribution of US’ shale gas yield growth; （3）global gas trade failed to keep the rebounding momentum as the previous year, but saw a sharp decline; （4）facing the multiple pressures of weak economy, competition of low-price coal and a mild winter, major developed economies were seeing weak gas consumption and new emerging economies was running out of steam except the US which was still in an upward tendency; （5）spot gas price played a leading role in the downward fluctuation of the world’s gas price.

With the rapid development of marine oil and gas resources industry, the problem of marine oil and gas pipeline protection is put on the national legislative agenda. Based on combing the existing laws and regulations in China offshore oil and natural gas pipeline protection, this paper expounds the current status of legal protection of China's offshore oil and natural gas pipeline, puts forward China's offshore oil and gas pipelines protection legal issues and also discusses how to perfect the protective countermeasures. Meanwhile, it suggests that: （1）the marine oil and natural gas pipeline regulations on the protection of our country should divide marine administrative area clearly for authority; （2）pipeline competent authority and the pipeline enterprise must share the proper responsibility, and increase the punishments for illegal behaviors; （3）local governments should formulate the offshore oil and gas pipeline protection regulations according to situations.

In 2014, the development of China natural-gas market still increased steadily. From the supply side, affected by market demand and price adjustment, the natural-gas output was in a stable increase, both LNG and pipeline-gas imports also hit all-time highs, and some conflicts between supply and demand eased. From the infrastructure construction side, the negotiations between China and Russia on import gas purchase and sales reached an agreement; the Central Asian gas pipeline line C, the three line west part of West-east Gas Pipeline, and the Shandong LNG- imported receiving station were all put into operation, which might provide new guarantee for domestic natural-gas supply. From the demand side, controlled by economic slowdown and coal-price decline, non-resident natural-gas demand was at stagflation. Meanwhile, the government formulated a series of policies on natural-gas industry and price reform, which could promote the marketization process. It is expected that in 2015, the China natural-gas supply will continue to grow, but the growth rate will decrease; the international oil price will fall sharply, also resulting in domestic gas price reduction.

Facing with the big environment that the growth rate of natural gas supply and demand decreased fast in recent years, and based on the data of IEA prediction, this paper analyses the development trend and characteristics of the global natural gas market in the next 5 years. It can be found that global demand for natural gas, supply and trading volume will maintain strong growth trend; regional supply imbalance has become increasingly evident: emerging countries are still the main driving force of natural gas market development while as the main origin and consumption places of natural gas, North America and Asia - Oceania area's leading position in the market will be more obvious, but CIS and the European market will remain weak; the price difference in three major regional markets will continue to exist, but the divergences narrow.