Abstract: In 2021, the contradiction between supply and demand of natural gas in various regions around the world was prominent caused by multiple factors, such as the improved situation of the global COVID-19, slowly recovered world economy, resumed growth of energy consumption, intertwined geopolitical and financial risks, significantly risen and violently fluctuated energy prices. The global natural gas development trend is predicted by analyzing the development direction of the petroleum industry, natural gas supply and demand base level,change trend of trade volume, and natural gas reserves distribution and production change. The results show that natural gas reserves are abundant in the world, and the investment in natural gas exploration and development has rebounded driven by demand growth and price rise;The proportion of natural gas in the world energy consumption structure is increasing, which plays an important role in promoting the global energy transition; The global supply and demand of natural gas shows a pattern of “tight balance”, in which the Asia Pacific region is the major importer of natural gas, and it is expected that natural gas will surpass oil to become the world’s largest energy. In the future, it is suggested that China should actively adjust its energy strategy, enhance its linkage with the international energy market, improve the energy prices monitoring and judgement mechanism, timely adjust its foreign strategic cooperation in energy business, increase domestic investment in natural gas exploration and development, enhance multilateral international energy cooperation, and stick to the bottom line of energy security, accelerate the construction of natural gas operation system integrating “reserve increase, supply secure and price stabilization”, and improve the ability to respond to crises, so as to better cope with the challenges posed by global energy development and natural gas market fluctuations.