Policy

Since the end of the Libyan revolution’s armed conflict, the country’s oil and gas industry has made a remarkable recovery. In the short term, the efforts of the new authorities and their foreign partners will continue to be focused on the improvement of the security situation and the restoration of oil production to pre-conflict levels. And in the longer term, any plans for gas sector expansion will require significant investment, which in turn will hinge on political stability and how friendly to foreign investors government policy is. Gas Matters examines the outlook for gas in the new Libya.

Germany’s ambitious renewables-focused energy policy, unveiled in 2010, seemed to have dealt a major blow to the gas industry by overlooking its low-carbon potential and instead opting to dramatically reduce gas consumption by 2050. Germany’s surprise retreat from nuclear energy after the Fukushima crisis in Japan looked to have opened the door for gas to assume its rightful policy role – but again, the industry was disappointed. In the first of two articles on Germany’s gas market, Gas Matters finds that while the outlook for gas is currently dim, optimism remains that it may yet be called on by the government to answer a policy wake-up call for reliable energy supply.