Will gas continue to be in demand for power plants despite rising costs?

Gas-Fed Power Plant Costs Double in Four Years, Developer Says

The cost of building natural-gas-fired power stations has soared in the past four years on a lack of competition in the market for generation equipment, according to a developer.
"Costs have more than doubled since 2004," Martin Giesen, chief executive officer of Zug, Switzerland-based Advanced Power AG, said at a conference in Amsterdam. "The lack of competition has been a real problem."
Gas-fed stations, which emit about half as much carbon dioxide as coal-fired units, are increasingly favored by European utilities adding new capacity. As many as 61 percent of plants under construction or proposed in 15 western European markets will burn gas, according to a Prospex Research Ltd. study published Sept. 29.
The market for new plants is dominated by General Electric Co., Siemens AG, Mitsubishi Corp. and Alstom SA, Giesen said in a subsequent interview.
The big four have "all the smart equipment, the high-tech hardware," he said. A 400-megawatt gas-fired plant now costs about 300 million euros ($409 million) and an 800-megawatt station costs about double that, according to Giesen.
GE Energy's Bart Stoffer, a delegate at the conference, declined to comment on whether a lack of competition among equipment providers is helping to keep prices high.
Advanced Power is developing gas-fired electricity generation in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the northeastern U.S. Giesen is also looking at projects in the U.K., he said, declining to be more specific.

How will this affect development in gas-dependent countries like Singapore and Malaysia?