ABSTRACT
This is a book on applied energy economics. It is intended as a simple, comprehensive and up-to-date review of the natural gas markets. Unlike my books The political economy of oil and The political economy of coal, it concentrates almost exclusively on a single resource, conventional natural gas, although Chapter 2 provides a general energy outlook and the short final chapter considers some macroeconomic aspects of the ‘energy crisis′. Here it seems useful to mention that at both the 1984 (Cambridge, England) and 1985 (Bonn, West Germany) meetings of the International Association of Energy Economists, it was widely maintained that during the remainder of this century, natural gas may have the most exciting future of all the energy resources. Certainly this should be the case if the large scale exploitation of the enormous natural gas supplies of the Middle East could begin.
