Forecasting natural gas production using diffusion models: application to Algerian case

The aim of this thesis is to forecast the production of conventional Algerian natural gas. Algeria is a long-standing gas supplier of Europe, especially Italy and Spain, therefore a close examination of the phenomenon should be carried out. The analysis is divided in two parts and each of them has a peculiar research approach. The first one involves the depiction of the “broad picture”, that is how natural gas market is changing across the world, and then a more detailed description of Algeria and its energy market. The second chapter presents a class of statistical models called “diffusion models”; several specifications are showed with the aim to capture different features of the population, such as latent heterogeneity among the agents and multiple generations. The models yield useful statistics to assess future development of gas production in Algeria. The forecasts stemming from the two approaches are coherent each other, suggesting an incontrovertible declining trend in gas production for Algeria and a shift towards renewables energy resources