Natural Gas Production 2024

Qatar and Saudi Arabia together produced roughly 303 bcm of natural gas in 2024, more than the entire African continent's 47 countries combined, which totalled around 250 bcm and just 6% of world output. That comparison, visible in the treemap accompanying this article where each country's cell is sized by output rather than land area, captures how unevenly gas production is distributed. Three separate shifts in 2024 are redrawing that map further: the United States posted a fresh production record, China quietly overtook Canada to enter the world's top four, and Russia's last major pipeline route into Central Europe went dark on 31 December.

America's Unmatched Scale

The United States produced about 1,032 bcm of gas in 2024, roughly a quarter of the world's total and more than Russia, Iran and China combined. It has held the title of the world's largest gas producer every year since 2011, when the shale revolution of the 2000s and 2010s pushed it past every established rival, and it has been the largest energy producer of any kind, not just gas, since that same year. The US was also the top LNG exporter in 2024 at 11.9 Bcf/d, according to the EIA, though shipments stayed roughly flat year-over-year because of unplanned outages at export terminals. Scale has not translated into cheap energy for consumers: record production continuing into 2025 still saw Henry Hub prices rise through the year, as LNG export terminals and data-centre power demand absorbed the extra supply.

Russia's Broken Pipeline Empire

Russia remains the world's second-largest producer at 630 bcm, a figure that understates how much its market has changed. Gazprom produced 416 bcm in 2024 but sold only 355 bcm, leaving roughly 60 bcm unsold, more gas than Egypt's entire annual output, effectively stranded. On 31 December 2024, Ukraine let its Soviet-era transit agreement with Russia expire, closing the last major pipeline route carrying Russian gas into Central Europe and ending a relationship built over roughly six decades. EU pipeline imports from Russia collapsed by more than two-thirds in four years, from 14.7 Bcf/d in 2020 to 4.4 Bcf/d in 2024, accelerated by the REPowerEU push to cut dependence on Russian supply. Russia's overall rank hasn't moved, because most of its output now serves domestic consumption and pivots toward China and Asian LNG buyers rather than Europe.

China's Quiet Rise

China overtook Canada in 2024 to become the world's fourth-largest producer, reaching 248 bcm on a 6% jump driven by policy pushes into deep shale formations. That climb doesn't amount to energy independence. China is simultaneously the world's largest LNG importer, which means domestic production still falls well short of demand even as it climbs the producer rankings. The result is a country expanding supply and import volumes at the same time, a pattern distinct from the US or Qatar, where rising output is tied to export ambitions rather than closing a domestic gap.

One Reservoir, Two Producers

Qatar (180 bcm) and Saudi Arabia (124 bcm) both sit in the global top ten, and Qatar's output traces to a single geological feature: the North Field, discovered in 1971 and shared with Iran, where it's called South Pars. At an estimated 900 trillion cubic feet of reserves, it's the largest non-associated gas field on the planet and the reason both countries independently rank among the world's biggest producers. QatarEnergy's expansion of the field is set to lift the country's LNG capacity 43%, from 77 to 110 million tonnes per year. Saudi Arabia's output, by contrast, barely registers in global LNG trade. Unlike Qatar, the Saudis consume almost all their gas domestically for power generation and desalination rather than exporting it, so a similar production volume translates into a completely different role in world markets.

Argentina and the Rest of the Field

Outside the top ranks, Argentina's Vaca Muerta shale formation, identified as commercially significant around 2010-2013, pushed national output up 23% in 2024 versus 2023, with production hitting fresh records into 2025. Argentina is now South America's clear top producer, a rise that took over a decade of pipeline and export-terminal buildout to materialise. In Oceania, Australia accounts for over 90% of the region's output within a regional total built around its 152 bcm, with Papua New Guinea and New Zealand splitting the remainder. Globally, production grew about 1.2% in 2024, and gas supplied 33% of the world's incremental energy growth that year, more than oil, coal or renewables individually, according to the IEA's Global Energy Review 2025.

What the Map Suggests Next

The rankings for 2024 already reflect three multi-year trends converging in the same twelve months: American supply growth that shows no sign of plateauing, Chinese production rising alongside Chinese import demand rather than replacing it, and a Russian gas relationship with Europe that took six decades to build and roughly four years to collapse. With Qatar's North Field expansion and Argentina's Vaca Muerta both still ramping up, the next few years of data are likely to show further movement rather than a settled order.

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