By Ion Andronache, chief executive officer, Syscom18, Romania In the last five decades the overall use of natural gas has led to a variety of technologies and practices in almost all the countries of the world and the industry has evolved and expanded. The natural gas industry requires an evolved automation and safety system to handle all aspects of this business. It must conform to regulatory norms and have the capabilities for advanced process control to maximize natural gas send-out while minimizing energy requirements. The gas market is constantly growing and developing new ways and equipment to meet the industrial and public needs as well the safety requirements. Specialists project that global gas demand will be more than 45% higher in 2030 than it is today, largely driven by huge growth in energy demand in developing countries, coupled with growing worldwide needs for clean power generation. In this respect, natural gas emits up to 60% less carbon dioxide than coal along with significantly fewer emissions that affect air quality. Recent technology enabling supply increases in natural gas will expand its importance. The companies are also expanding their manufacturing capacity for natural gas equipment to meet growing infrastructure demands. In fact, growing demand for natural gas has changed the global market, so there has been extensive research to reduce as much as possible the cost of production and transport. The equipment developed by the manufacturers is following these trends. The safety requirements are applied to the entire chain of processes for obtaining and using natural gas from exploration, extraction, processing, transportation and storage to distribution. All the equipment is based on international requirements. Additionally, integration must include people, environmental, process and equipment protection and management. Integration of these sub-systems help operators mitigate risk while providing reliability, flexibility and centralized control with remote collaboration capabilities. Technology advancements in natural gas have reduced processing costs and the fact that natural gas is a “clean” fuel (compared to coal and other fossil fuels) has led to significant growth in the natural gas trade. Services provided by equipment developers and system integrators in the natural gas sector include project engineering, main automation contractors, security management of process control networks or metering instrumentation, control systems and advanced natural gas applications support to maximize availability and customers’ business potential. We deliver complete measurement and automation solutions for accurate information in the most efficient manner possible. That means control, safety, SCADA, advanced control, optimization, analytical instruments, precision measurement, equipment, electrical systems, integrated telecommunications, security devices and systems, simulators, information management and so on. Briefly, we offer the best of our own and third-party products and applications for the entire supply chain, throughout the project's lifecycle. Syscom 18 targets especially the Middle East and Eurasia as these areas dominate the world market as natural gas suppliers. Almost all the natural gas producers in the Middle East and Asia have spent the past two years gearing up for expansion. The Middle East especially has substantial gas reserves and so far only a few percent of the total reserve has been exploited. This implies there is substantial scope to develop the industry in the region and has attracted equal participation from state-owned national oil companies and international oil companies. These companies have invested in the natural gas industry through joint ventures and consortia.