Shell touts gas benefits for Asia

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei, Sept. 23 (UPI) -- Natural gas resources will help fuel economic growth in Asia, where advances are vastly outpacing the rest of the world, a Shell executive said.

Malcolm Brinded, executive director for upstream developments at Shell, spoke to delegates at an energy conference in Brunei.

He said advancing economies in Asia, coupled with the energy deficit brought on by Japan's nuclear power disaster, means the region needs to "invest heavily" in all resources, including solar and wind.

Beijing is moving to include more renewable energy on the national grid. The country set a goal of increasing its solar power capacity significantly in the next five years.

Brinded noted, however, that conventional resources like oil and natural gas will continue to dominate the global energy mix.

"Natural gas will not just be a reliable and abundant fuel for Asia's remarkable economic growth," he said. "As the cleanest burning fossil fuel, it can also make an immediate impact in cushioning the environmental impact of the region's rising energy consumption."

This week, Howard Gruenspecht, acting administrator at the U.S. Energy Information Administration, said top energy consumer China is expected to use 68 percent more energy than the United States within the next quarter century.

The EIA said the expected increase in world energy consumption by 53 percent by 2035 to be driven largely by economic growth in China and India.