Any effort to green the economy in the coming years could encounter even greater resistance from the dirty energy industry: its stakeholders are growing in number.
The United States is set to become a net-exporter of natural gas this year, according to an Energy Information Administration blog post published on Wednesday. The capacity of the US to ship liquid natural gas (LNG) abroad is only expected to increase in the coming years, too, with five export terminals currently under construction.
Americans have, on average, been net importers of natural gas for the past 59 years.
“Based on construction plans, EIA expects that by 2020 the United States will have the third-largest LNG export capacity in the world after Australia and Qatar,” the agency said.
It estimated that investments in infrastructure would see “US liquefaction capacity” increase by a factor of almost seven between the end of last year and the end of 2019. The liquefying of natural gas helps producers store and ship the fuel overseas.
Production of natural gas surged under Presidents Bush and Obama, with hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” opening up reserves that had previously been out-of-reach.
The percentage of total natural gas in the US extracted through fracking shot up–to 67 from 7 percent, between 2000-2016–despite the controversial and dangerous nature of the practice.
Exports, in the short-term, have been driven by increased demand from Mexico and decreased supply from Canada, EIA noted.
In 2009, the US surpassed Russia as the world’s leading natural gas producer. Last year, in February, an American company exported LNG for the first time ever.
President Trump is aiming to ramp up US natural gas exports by looking to Asia for additional customers. That strategy, however, could be hampered by over-supply in the market, as The Financial Times noted earlier this summer.
“[A]ctual use of US LNG export terminals will be affected by the rate of global LNG demand growth and competition from other global LNG suppliers,” EIA also warned on Wednesday.
