Chief Executives from the leading global LNG players will address the opening session on Monday of the 2012 Gastech conference in London, covering issues such as expanding supply and demand, North American liquefaction projects, and concerns in Asia about securing enough cargoes at the right prices.
Gastech will take place at the ExCeL conference centre over four days from October 8-11 and 120 high-profile speakers will give their views and forecasts on the industry's future direction.
Several thousand delegates will attend the conference from the trading, supply, purchasing and engineering sectors.
Frank Chapman, CEO of host company BG Group, is scheduled to give the opening keynote address, touching on projects costs and the future dynamics of portfolio LNG cargo trading.
An executive panel will then host a discussion on new industry perspectives under the heading of the "Golden Age for Gas".
Speakers include Martin Houston, Chief Operating Officer of BG; Helge Lund, CEO of Norway's Statoil; Shigeru Muraki, an Executive Vice President of Tokyo Gas Co; Hamad Rashid Al-Mohannadi, Managing Director of Qatar's RasGas; Abdelhamid Zerguine, CEO of Algeria's Sonatrach; and Bill Dudley, President of liquefaction plant builder, Bechtel Corp. of the US.
There will also be discussions on "security of supply versus liberalization", with speakers including Alexander Novak, Russian Minister of Energy, and Stefan Judisch, CEO of Germany's RWE Supply and Trading.
An afternoon session on the first day will focus on "The Americas- From Demand Sink to Supplier" and will include speakers such as Charif Souki, CEO of Cheniere Energy, developer of two new LNG plants on the US Gulf coast, and Janine McArdle, a Senior Vice President at Apache Corp., developer of the Kitimat LNG project on Canada's Pacific coast.
An Asia-Pacific discussion will then follow under the title "Meeting Demand Growth" and will include speakers such as Young-Myung Yang, Executive Vice President at Korea Gas Corp.; Takashi Kubota, CEO of Japanese engineering firm Chiyoda Corp.; and B.C. Tripathi, Chairman of leading LNG buyer, Gas Authority of India.
The accompanying Gastech trade exhibition will include more than 400 international exhibitors displaying LNG and natural gas industry technologies.
In addition, 50 recruitment companies and organisations will attend and exhibit at a recruitment show as the industry tries to make up its skills and manpower shortfall, particularly in areas such as engineering.
