| Coal is the main energy of the 19 th century, oil replaced the coal in 20 th century,while in the 21 st century the natural gas will play the role. Currently, the world's annual consumption of natural gas increases by 24%, expected that by 2030, natural gas will be the fastest growing fossil energy. At present,Chinese energy industry is facing a triple challenge: the supply gap brought by the fast growth in demand,energy saving problem and taking part in international cooperation. Natural gas is a very realistic option to solve the triple pressure. However, China's natural gas resources in the primary energy consumption structure in the proportion accounts for only about 5%, and there are many problems such as uneven distribution of consumption, the more and more serious market imbalance between supply and demand of natural gas and natural gas prices and captive market.In this context, the paper analyses China's overall production, consumption, import trends and other current situation of natural gas and results that regional differences is a distinctive features of China's natural gas consumption.Based on the Theil coefficient method,the paperanalyses natural gas consumption of the three regions of the differences within the region and between regions. The results shows that with the national policies published like " China's Western Campaign", " The Belt and Road Initiative", "Rise of Central China" and a series of other policies focused on some areas and with high-speed domestic economicdevelopment,the Theil coefficient to population-weighted shows a downward trend after 2004, the overall regional differences in China's natural gas consumption is getting smaller and smaller,the regional gas consumption and increase of urban population have a higher degree of match. The Theil of the three areas based on two kinds of weights tend to decrease,indicating that differences in consumption of natural gas in the interior of the three regions is shrinking.During the 1997-2013, China's natural gas consumption differences between the contribution rate is shrinking and the differences within the region Contribution Rate dominant, so the overall differences between China's natural gas consumption mainly in the region. The differences within the region a mainly thanks to the western region, followed by the central region.Based on the analysis of regional differences, the paper uses the paneldata from 1997 to 2013 across the country's 30 provinces, including municipalities nationwide quantitative to study thethree regional consumption factors and differences in the impact of natural gas of the whole country and three regions.The conclusions follow :the increase of per capita GDP, urban population growth, the construction of the pipe network can boost national consumption of natural gas, and the rise of the alternative energy prices level will dampen consumption of natural gas. Improvement of per capita GDP can significantly boost natural gas consumption in the central and eastern regions;demographic factors have little effect on the western, natural gas consumption in the three parts are all sensitive about the urban population; pipeline facilities construction level on the eastern and western regions are present significantly affected, However,natural gas consumption is not sensitive to the central region of the length of the pipeline; natural gas consumption only in the central parts is price elastic; the increase of theproportion of value of the secondary industry significantly inhibit the natural gas consumption in eastern while significantlyboost in natural gas consumption in the western region, but for the central region and the whole country's natural gas consumption is not an important influence; east and west parts are rich in climate resilience, extreme weather will bring an increase of the city gas. |
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