MAPPING OF NATURAL GAS SUPPLY CHAINS: LITERATURE REVIEW

Natural gas is third most important fuel in the world with extremely complex supply chain that effects around one third of natural gas price. To mitigate complexity, to clarify position and processes, and to ensure maximum possible optimization of natural gas supply chain, practitioners and scientist use mapping method in creating a "picture" of natural gas supply chain. Aim of this research is to provide guidelines for effective use of mapping method in natural gas supply chain researches. Indicative preliminary research has be done by analysis analyzing and comparing most relevant scientific papers dealing with natural gas supply chain and their use of natural gas supply chain maps. Articles were analyzed according to following criteria: use of supply chain maps, type of used supply chain maps and selected supply chain map's attributes: coverage of map, spatial character of maps, number of supply chain tiers presented in maps, is there a focal point in maps and do maps highlight cycle view of supply chains. Results indicate that supply chain maps are essential tool for natural gas supply chain mapping where researcher mostly choose relationship based maps of evenly whole or part of supply chain, most often with 5 supply chain tiers, with no explicit spatial aspect, and no focal point and cycle view. Main study limitations are use of only one (although biggest) databases and limited number of papers taken into consideration. In further researches other relevant databases should be taken into consideration, and more specific maps' types could be analyzed.