The Coming Gas Shake-Up

LONDON — From the rise of renewable power to the transformation of the United States into a heavyweight producer of oil and gas, the global energy market, normally slow to evolve, is going through major upheaval.That is the assessment of Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, the organization based in Paris that is publishing its annual World Energy Outlook on Tuesday.The report does not make for easy bedtime reading: It is 763 pages long and stuffed with data-laden charts and tables.

Still, the document tries to project current trends as far out as 2040, and sees an industry at the nexus of various powerful trends.The United States, for instance, has shifted from being an energy-dependent importer to a new role as one of the world’s biggest producers of oil and gas, the report says. But concerns about greenhouse-gas emissions have clouded the future of fossil fuels. That has encouraged the development of alternatives like solar and wind power, which increasingly compete with traditional energy sources.

By the 2030s, largely because of production from shale-rock formations, the United States is expected to produce more than 30 million barrels of oil and gas a day, the report says. That is 50 percent more than any other country has ever produced in a single year.That is a sharp shift from the country’s position just a decade ago, when it was a major importer of oil.

The shale industry has gone through a “trial by fire” in recent years, the report says, referring to a sharp falloff in the price of oil from more than $100 a barrel to as low as around $30 a barrel. It is now above $60 a barrel.

That has transformed the shale sector, and it is “leaner and hungrier” than it was before the price crash, the report says. As a result, it is better able to quickly react to any sign of higher prices. That is crucial, as the OPEC oil cartel tries to manage its production levels to bolster prices.

Changes in how gas is transported and traded are having a major effect, on the energy industry and the environment.

As the United States increases its gas production — it is now on track to surpass traditional giants like Qatar and Russia and become the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, or L.N.G. — it is also exporting what the report calls a disruptive “mind-set about how gas markets should operate.”