In the coming 30 years Russia will need 157 billion dollars' worth of investments for development of power engineering

In the coming 30 years Russia will need 157 billion dollars' worth of investments for supporting and developing power engineering. This forecast, as RIA Novosti reports, has been made in a regular report of the International Energy Agency, whose presentation was held on Saturday in the Japanese city of Osaka before the opening of the International Energy Forum.

The report The World Energy-2002, which gives the forecast of the development of world power engineering for the period till 2030, points out that the role of Russia as a major supplier of oil and gas to the world market will rapidly grow in the coming few years. Simultaneously, the energy consumption will also grow in Russia. The document pays attention to the fact that today Russia is a major exporter of natural gas in the world, the second, after Saudi Arabia, supplier of oil and other oil products, and the third, after the USA and China, in the volume of energy consumption.

According to the estimates given in the report, the demand for energy products in the world in the period till 2030 will grow at the level of 1.7 percent a year. This means that in 2030 mankind will consume 60 percent more energy than now. The demand for natural gas will grow most of all. In the coming 30 years it will increase two-fold.

International Energy Agency's experts forecast that in the 30 years to come the number of countries - producers of energy products will plummet and by 2030 the oil and gas production will concentrate in the main in the Middle East region and Russia.