There have been a lot of talks about big LNG projects around the world, as large natural gas field discoveries on and offshore have encouraged countries to plan LNG export projects, including North America, Australia, East Africa, and the east Mediterranean.

However, in an interview with Reuters on Monday, Royal Dutch Shell’s director of projects and technology stated that only a fraction of these projects would become reality, due to high development costs and low profit margins in the gas sector.

Indeed, European forward gas prices have dropped more than 15 percent since the beginning of the year. In Asia, where most of the LNG trading takes place, spot LNG prices have dropped more than 35 percent this year. In this context, analysts say many new gas projects will have difficulties developing as the return on investment will probably not be sufficient to receive the financing.

In the East Mediterranean, Woodside Petroleum, a specialist LNG developer, decided last month to pull out of an agreement to take a stake of $2.7 billion in Israel’s Leviathan project.

In Mozambique and Tanzania, where offshore gas fields were recently discovered, finding the necessary financing is likely to be a struggle, as all infrastructure in these countries to be built from scratch.

According to Matthias Bichsel, member of Shell’s Executive Committee, even in Australia, where Shell is building the world’s first floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) project, high labour costs are causing problems to develop the current gas projects.

Now, natural gas has a promising future and many potential uses such as in heavy transport, but the question is how much time will it take to bring down LNG costs, and for gas to take this dominant role in the global energy trade?