During 16-17 October 2024 the Secretary General of the International Gas Union (IGU), Menelaos (Mel) Ydreos, attended a series of high-level events and meetings at Gastech in Houston where the IGU/World Gas Conference 2025 (WGC2025) exhibition stand enjoyed a significant interest from global organisations operating in the energy sector and government representatives.
He was also joined by several other IGU senior staff, such as IGU’s Flagship Events Director Rodney Cox, and IGU’s Strategy and Advocacy Director, Mark McCrory, as well as representatives of WGC2025 Organising Committee (below).
From left to right: Mr Rodney Cox – IGU Flagship Events Director, and Mr Mark McCrory – IGU Strategy and Advocacy Director
On the first day of the event, Mr Ydreos, spoke at the Asia-US LNG Roundtable which brought together over seventy organisations spanning the full LNG value chain from project developers to customers, and from investors to governments. The discussion covered recent regulatory developments and risks affecting the LNG projects pipeline, as well as the outlook for greater LNG/gas utilisation in various Asian economies – including India and China.
During his intervention, IGU’s Secretary General stressed the divergence of some global energy scenarios with the likely prospects of future energy demand growth – and the value that the flexibility of LNG can provide in meeting that growing demand to deliver improved outcomes for those regions and populations across the world lacking access to energy.
Following his intervention during the Asia-U.S. LNG Roundtable, Mr Ydreos held an in-depth discussion with Mr Marcus Lee, Senior Energy Policy Adviser at the United States’ Department of Energy. Their meeting focussed on the US’ perspectives on global energy policy, optimal approaches to methane regulation and the role that gas can play in driving prosperity in developing markets. Mr Ydreos briefed Mr Lee on IGU’s upcoming activities, and potential areas to enhance US’ administration engagement with IGU events, reports and thematic priorities were also discussed in detail.
From left to right: Mr Menelaos (Mel) Ydreos – IGU Secretary General, and Mr Marcus Lee – Senior Energy Policy Adviser at the United States’ Department of Energy
Renewable gases play an important role in the world’s energy transition and net zero aspirations, and natural gas and its evolving technologies support the renewable energy supply by overcoming intermittency and instability. Together, they can enable net-zero pathways, energy security and access issues.
This is why IGU, under the leadership of its new Secretary General, Mr Ydreos, has embarked on a concrete path of dialogue and potential co-operation with representative bodies of the green gases sector, such as the Hydrogen Council.
To this end, Mr Ydreos and the CEO of the Hydrogen Council, Ms Ivanka Jemelkova, continued their discussions on how the two organisations could collaborate to bring value to the hydrogen technical and policy discussions.
