Abstract: Continued growth of demand and changes in sources of energy supply are effecting a major transformation in the worldwide natural gas industry. At the same time, improvements in transportation techniques and concernover the availability and quality of other energy forms are opening new vistas fornatural gas. Natural gas is found with petroleum, though some oil fields have verylittle gas and some gas fields yield no commercial oil. Chemically, natural gas is amixture of the lighter chemicals found in petroleum, mainly methane with butane,propane and other gases. Carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and even helium may be present also. Natural gas is expected to meet about one-fifth of thenon-socialist world`s energy demand by 1985. Natural gas consumption in 1985,according to United Nations estimates, would run at the annual rate of 1,500 million metric tons coal equivalent in the socialist world as against the 1962 consumption of 600 million and 120 million metric tons coal equivalent respectively. Theworld`s reserves of natural gas are extremely large; the experts estimates vary, butthere are certainly more than 80 million millions of cubic meters. This is equivalentto the calorific value of 100 thousand million tons of hard coal. The cumulativeconsumption from 1963 to 1985 wouldj according to U.N.’s estimates, total something like 30,000 million metric tons of coal equivalent which is about the sameas the present proved reserves of 28,800 million metric tons coal equivalent. This,however, does not mean that there would be no more gas after 1985. Extensiveexploration efforts combined with better know-how and improved gas technologywould help discover more gas reserves during up to 1985. Getting natural gas outof the ground does not cost very much, but transporting it for long distances is onlypossible with the help of expensive equipment. It is estimated that transportationand distribution account for 75 per cent of the consumer price of natural gas.