In 2009, world production of natural gas was cut down by 2.8%. Different trends were noticed among largest gas producers. The US became the world's largest gas producer in 2009, exceeding Russian volumes. In 2010, Russia returned to first place. Its production increased by 4.4% and balanced a shrinking output in the European countries (-9%, despite increasing outputs in Norway and the Netherlands). The OECD thus posted a slight growth of 0.1% in 2009. Conversely, gas production in Russia was scaled down by 12% while Algeria experienced a substantial decline in its production (-6%). In the Middle East, gas production development slowed down and grew at a slower pace than the previous year (4% from 7% in 2008).

This is a list of countries by natural gas production mostly based on The World Factbook.

A wood gas generator is a gasification unit which converts timber or charcoal into wood gas, a syngas consisting of atmospheric nitrogen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, traces of methane, and other gases, which - after cooling and filtering - can then be used to power an internal combustion engine or for other purposes. Historically wood gas generators were often mounted on vehicles, but present studies and developments concentrate mostly on stationary plants.

Gasification had been an important and common technology which was widely used to generate Town gas from coal mainly for lighting purposes during the 19th and early 20th century. When the first stationary internal combustion engines based on the Otto cycle became available in the 1870s, they began displacing steam engines as prime movers in many works requiring stationary motive power. Adoption accelerated after the Otto engine's patent expired in 1886. The potential and practical applicability of gasification to internal combustion engines were well-understood from the earliest days of their development.

Natural gas is a naturally occurring hydrocarbon gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, with up to 20 % of other hydrocarbons as well as impurities in varying amounts such as carbon dioxide. Natural gas is widely used as an important energy source in many applications including heating buildings, generating electricity, providing heat and power to industry, as fuel for vehicles and as a chemical feedstock in the manufacture of products such as plastics and other commercially important organic chemicals.

Natural gas is found in deep underground natural rock formations or associated with other hydrocarbon reservoirs, in coal beds, and as methane clathrates. Petroleum is also another resource found near and with natural gas. Most natural gas was created over time by two mechanisms: biogenic and thermogenic. Biogenic gas is created by methanogenic organisms in marshes, bogs, landfills, and shallow sediments. Deeper in the earth, at greater temperature and pressure, thermogenic gas is created from buried organic material.