Implementation plan and impact of natural gas pipeline network transformation from volume metering to energy metering in China

The volume-based natural gas measurement system not only fails to accurately reflect the value of natural gas but also hinders fair trading and the long-term development of the market. This paper proposes specific implementation schemes for energy measurement systems from three aspects. It presents two methods for converting natural gas prices from volume measurement to energy measurement and three selection methods for reference heating values, resulting in a total of six combined implementation schemes. Taking a certain operational long-distance pipeline as an example, a simulation model is established using SPS to investigate the impact of the transition from a volume-based metering system to an energy-based metering system on the economic benefits of pipeline operator.