An amazing and welcome development has been achieved. As the Wall Street Journal just reported, for the first time in six decades, America exported more natural gas than it imported. It has once again become a net exporter of natural gas, and this new export sector will grow rapidly.
The net export volume is starting modestly: in November we exported 7.4 billion cubic feet (BCF) per day, while still importing 7.0 BCF per day. But no one doubts that from this modest start the volume of exports will grow. American gas exports have gone up by 50% over the past six years, and the Energy Department projects that we will be the third-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) by 2020 — behind only Australia and Qatar. Citigroup estimates that by 2020 the US will be supplying to the rest of the world about 20% of the natural gas it produces.
No one doubts that from this modest start the volume of natural gas exports will grow.
To cite one example of success: Cheniere Energy opened a facility in the Sabine Pass (on the border of Texas and Louisiana). It was originally intended to import LNG, but the fracking revolution so decreased the price of natural gas that the plant was quickly “reverse-designed” to export it. Since February, when the plant started shipments of LNG, its output has grown to an average of 1.5 BCF exported per day. Not surprisingly, Cheniere is expanding the Sabine Pass plant rapidly, and will open more export facilities over the next two years.
Three years ago, the Freeport LNG facility at Quintana Island, Texas, got approval to export LNG, and it will begin exporting massive quantities of LNG in two years. Next year, Dominion Resources will start exporting LNG to India and Japan.
The only way this US export industry won’t grow is if the government — intentionally or by simple bungling — stops it.
So this trend toward America becoming the dominant reliable supplier of LNG for the whole damn planet will not just continue — it will accelerate. Thank you again, free market: remarkably shrewd private individuals, acting primarily out of self-interest, came up with a way — fracking — to make domestic oil and natural gas plentiful again, and plentiful indefinitely. Government subsidized losers — technologies such as wind and solar energy — but the free market found the efficient answer.
In fact, the only way this US export industry won’t grow is if the government — intentionally or by simple bungling — stops it. The progressive liberal Democrats hate fracking, of course. Obama did everything he could to impede it — such as taking an unprecedented amount of land out of public use — although most of the land upon which fracking operations are happening is private. Hillary Clinton repeatedly stated her total opposition to fracking (not to mention coal), which likely was a major factor in her ignominious loss to Donald Trump.
Speaking of Trump, he may ironically set back the natural gas export boom brought by fracking. For while he certainly claims to support it, the largest customers of our natural gas are, outside of ourselves, our NAFTA partners, Canada and Mexico. Together they are buying a record high of our total output. But Trump — a populist to the core — hates free trade, and has targeted NAFTA as a “bad deal” for America. His bungling trade policy could well get us into trade wars with the very countries that could become our biggest future energy export markets.
