2004 Volume 83 Issue 11 Pages 916-923
In 2000, the world natural gas consumption was about 2, 397 bcm (billion cubic meter), 32% of which is consumed in North America. In this paper, genetic algorithms procedure was applied to compute annual time series of economically optimum supply rates combination consisting individual natural gases in North America so that net present value of total production costs plus transportation costs could be minimized. At first, several computations for USA were carried out to settle the appropriate parameters of genetic algo-rithms, because long historical data on USA are available as well as infrastructure of gas pipelines is fully furnished. Next, computations based on the supply and demand scenario for North America were carried out and it was concluded that unconventional natural gases would play an important role to satisfy stable natural gas demand in the next 30 years in North America.