Mg-Al oxide supported Ni catalysts prepared by co-precipitation method for synthetic natural gas (SNG) from syngas methanation were developed. The properties of the catalysts were investigated by XRD, H2-TPR and nitrogen physisorption, etc. The catalytic syngas methanation activity tests showed that MgAl oxide supported Ni catalysts not only showed high activity at low reaction temperature (98.4% CH4 yield at 250 C) compared with Ni/Mg0 (97.0% CH4 yield at 310 C) but also showed an excellent thermal stability (maintained 95.2% CH4 yield after reaction at 700 C for 8h) compared with Ni/Al203 (12.4% CH4 yield after reaction at 700 C for 8 h). The XRD and nitrogen physisorption results indicated that the high catalytic activity of Mg-Al oxide supported Ni catalyst was related to the smaller Ni particle size compared with Ni/Mg0, which attributed to the higher specific surface area of Mg-Al oxide than that of MgO. The XRD and H2-TPR results suggested that the excellent thermal stability of Mg-Al oxide supported Ni catalyst was ascribed to the stronger metal-support interaction in comparison with Ni/Al203. This study demonstrates that tailoring the composite oxide catalyst support properties is an effective way to develop high-performance catalysts for SNG from syngas. C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.