Welcome to POLITICO Pro’s guide to the 2018 World Gas Conference — the most important gas industry event of the year.

I’m Matt Daily, the energy editor at POLITICO Pro, and our team of reporters will be scouring the conference for the trends and tech that are going to shape the industry for the next several decades. We know you’ve got an opinion — so send your insights and tips to me at [email protected] or tweet out your #WGC2018 wisdom to me @dailym1.

It’s hard to overstate the growing importance of natural gas in the global energy marketplace. Much was made about the coal rebound in 2017, when booming economies helped that fuel stage a modest comeback. But lost in that story was the fact that gas consumption made a far bigger jump, posting its biggest growth in nearly a decade — with demand in China surging by 10 percent. Investors have poured money into new production, pipelines and LNG plants, and even with that new supply, the world’s appetite keeps increasing. Whether it’s support for expanding industries, fuel switching or new fleets of gas-powered vehicles, the energy world is building for the gas century.

Some of industry’s biggest names will kick off Tuesday’s keynote program, and they’ll be welcomed by Energy Secretary Rick Perry — whose home state ushered in the fracking boom in the early 2000s when the Barnett Shale put the U.S . on a path to be a global force in gas. Exxon Mobil chief Darren Woods, Chevron’s Michael Wirth, Qatar Petroleum’s Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, BP’s Bob Dudley and Total’s Patrick Pouyanne are among the main stage’s top draws – and that’s just for Tuesday.

At least one of the speakers may have some ‘splaining to do, however: Perry has spent the past year pushing President Donald Trump’s campaign to stop coal from losing market share in the U.S. power sector, even going so far as to label it a national security threat for too much of the grid to rely on natural gas. That hasn’t pleased too many people in the U.S. gas industry, including some who will be taking the stage soon after Perry departs (for his meeting with Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak.) We’ll be looking for any sign that the industry — which is already complaining about rising costs due to the steel tariffs — is less than thrilled with the mixed message from the administration on gas.

CLIMATE CHANGE

PLUGGING THE LEAKS: The conference is just getting warmed up today, but there’s already an elephant in the room: a newly released study showing that fugitive emissions of methane, a powerful driver of global warming and the main ingredient in natural gas, are far higher than the Environmental Protection Agency has estimated. The data published in the journal Science last week show the actual U.S. emissions are 60 percent higher than previously believed — a figure that could undermine the industry’s push to make natural gas the transition fuel toward a more climate-friendly energy system.

Those emissions — which represent both a significant greenhouse gas problem and lost fuel sales for the industry — can be ratcheted down if gas producers and shippers adopt new technology to monitor and tighten up their equipment, according to experts on a lunch panel today sponsored by the unusual partnership of Exxon Mobil and the Environmental Defense Fund.

International Energy Agency executive director Fatih Birol told the crowd that many gas companies didn’t know that half their methane leaks could be sealed up at no net cost – meaning the sales of the captured gas would offset the investment in equipment. That would have a massive impact on climate change. “If we can make that 50 percent jump, the climate change benefits are equal to shutting down two-thirds of all the coal plants in Asia,” Birol said.

EDF President Fred Krupp said methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, is believed to be responsible for about a quarter of the planet’s warming so far. Yet dealing with it can be cheap, Krupp said. He recounted a conversation in which one energy CEO said his company had spent $3 million of its $1 billion total budget to eliminate leaks required by the state of Colorado. “The cost here is trivial … this is doable,” he said.

Still, Sara Ortwein, the president of Exxon’s XTO Energy arm, said while the company was implementing an aggressive program to stop leaks, updating equipment to the most current technology wasn’t cheap, although it was still too early to figure out how it would affect the company’s bottom line. And she said the company wasn’t averse to some government action. “Clearly a leak detection and repair program is a sound part of a regulation,” she said. “I think, though, that how that is articulated and implemented in a regulation are important … The devil’s in the details.”

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SO WHERE ARE WE AT WITH THAT? After a push by Republicans to overturn the Obama administration’s rules curbing methane leaks failed to pass the Senate last year, the Trump administration took on the task of rolling back the federal rules on its own. EPA has already proposed several changes to its Obama-era rule limiting methane emissions from new oil and gas wells, and says more such efforts are likely down the road. Shortly after arriving at the agency last year, Administrator Scott Pruitt stopped a similar rule that would have applied to existing wells. Fifteen Democratic attorneys general are now suing EPA over that delay.

Interior, meanwhile, has proposed repealing most of its own methane waste rule for wells on public lands after Republicans in Congress failed to nullify the rule via the Congressional Review Act. That rule and its repeal also face litigation efforts.

WORLD OF GAS

REASONS FOR SKEPTICISM ABOUT U.S. GAS ‘DOMINANCE’: Tuesday’s keynote speech from Perry is likely to tout the U.S. gas industry and the coming wave of LNG capacity on the Gulf Coast. But he’s expected to soft-pedal Trump’s pledge to establish American “energy dominance,” though everyone in the industry is aware of the subtext, particularly in light of the growing tensions in global trade.

Still it’s worth keeping the macro picture in mind.

The U.S. is the world’s biggest gas producer, followed by Russia, and the U.S. natural gas industry is making a big splash in the international markets with several new LNG production and export facilities coming on line. Last week came a U.S. Geological Survey assessment on the Eagle Ford showing that a whopping 66 trillion cubic feet of gas has yet to be tapped in that field.

But none of that alters an often-overlooked fact: The U.S. holds less than 5 percent of the world’s known gas reserves. BP’s 2018 Statistical Review put the U.S. proved gas reserves at 309 trillion cubic feet at the end of 2017, the highest in the Western Hemisphere, but only roughly a third of Russia’s reserves. And while Russia is the biggest single reserve holder, Iran and Qatar straddle the planet’s largest field, and together they hold 30 percent of the global total.

Both Iran and Qatar have been ramping up production, and both have a lot more room to run. Russia has long been the leading supplier into gas-poor Europe, and while there’s room to accommodate the new U.S. supplies on the global stage, the economics in the gas markets have a tendency to shift quickly — and in the end, the countries that may dominate the global market are likely to be the ones with the biggest holdings.