USA: A Net Exporter of Natural Gas?

Newgeography.com ^ | 6/9/2011 | Christopher Mims

[BfloGuy]

Less than a decade ago, major American energy companies were investing billions in constructing new terminals for importing liquefied natural gas — the cooled, dense state of methane that makes it economical for it to be transported by ship. Today, some of those same companies are contemplating spending billions to retrofit those facilities in order to export LNG.

What happened in the interim? Natural gas boomed in the U.S., thanks to major discoveries of unconventional gas deposits in shale rock and new extraction techniques. In 2011, the U.S. Energy Information Administration raised its estimate for “technically recoverable” natural gas reserves in the U.S. from 353,000 billion cubic feet to 827,000 billion cubic feet. At $4 for every million BTU, natural gas isn’t that much more expensive than coal, which trades at a little over $2 per million BTU but produces twice as much greenhouse gas and significantly more air pollution.

[BfloGuy]

One of the stock Democrat responses to drilling for more energy in the U.S. is "we won't get any benefit for at least 10 years". Well, eventually, 10 years go by and look at what happens.

It's been said before, but if we'd opened ANWR for drilling during the Clinton administration years, we'd be a whole lot better off now. This is no revelation to FReepers, of course, but it is good to see what happens when our overlords allow us to exploit the resources that, after all, are ours.

[nascarnation]

Well, eventually, 10 years go by and look at what happens.

Well said. Hopefully some boys and girls with the R after their name will remember this in debates.

[familyop]

There goes your fuel of tomorrow.

[Alberta's Child]

If we were to drill all over the U.S. while at the same time maintaining a fiscal/monetary policy that drives the dollar to its weakest level in decades, "we" won't benefit from the additional energy resources at all. Instead, you'd have the U.S. serving as a major energy exporter even as this same energy becomes increasingly unaffordable here in the U.S.

Kind of sounds like a Third World sh!t-hole, doesn't it?

[utherdoul]

well if we started exporting fuel we could buy some of our dollars back from china.

[DaxtonBrown]

[USA: A Net Exporter of Natural Gas?]

I myself have been a net exporter of Natural Gas for quite a while. In fact, my storage facility is a bit full right now and ripe for a shipment.

[Eva]

There was an article in the WSJ, Alaska’s Ebbing Oil, about how the oil is running out in Alaska and Obama has put a hold on projects that companies had been working on for 5 years under the excuse of the BP Deep Water Horizon spill.

[lonestar67]

Its worse than that.

The same lefties tell us that speculators manipulate the market toward higher prices.

That sword cuts both ways. When Bush lifted the off shore drilling ban late in the second term— oil and gasoline prices fell precipitously.

If the markets globally believed the US was really going to develop domestic energy— the effect would be immediate and profound.

But imagine that, speculators suppose that this administration is committed to limiting that production and that our consumption will continue to rise as the largest consumption base in the world.

The effect is exponential and obvious. Electing Obama is a powerful and lasting signal to international speculators that the US will not develop its vast and most sizeable fossil fuel reserves and we will continue to increase our consumption. This is as important as the actual regulations that hinder our production. Speculator can win wagers that whatever production emerges in the US— it will be shut down strangled and diminished by the fiat of anti-conservatives.

[reefdiver]

The current mess the country is in, reflects no long term thinking. A democrat has no long term plan, it's all right now. Tomorrow is for dreamers.
The current democrat gave no thought to the results of ordering banks to lend money to people who could not ever pay it back,
No thought to small business that has to pay the cost of zer0 care
No thought to what would happen if stimulus #1 & #2 failed

[RossA]

The US is already a huge exporter of natural gas - through the liquids removed from the natural gas stream. This is a hint to those who invest:

Check out our ethane/ethylene and propane, propylene exports. Check out the profits US/international plastics manufacturers who are able to change from naptha (crude oil based) feedstocks to ethane. Millions of barrels per day.

Check out where Shell is building its next ethylene plant. (Answer: Pennsylvania). Could have been upstate New York but for Albany politicians.

[dusttoyou]

Agree! But let’s do it sooner. About the most common sense solution in decades, hope nobama doesn’t throw a wrench in the gears.

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

Be careful of the liquefied kind. It’s difficult to detect.