The U.s. As Natural Gas Exporter?

Michael Giberson

Reports of the continuing change to the U.S. domestic energy resource picture. From the Wall Street Journal, “U.S Firms Plan to Export Gas“:

The emergence of the massive amount of gas in the U.S. “is a transformative development” that markets, policy makers and industry are still coming to grips with, said Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS CERA, an industry consultant.

“Up until 2007 and 2008, the assumption was that the U.S. was going to be a major importer of LNG and we would be integrated into the global market as a buyer,” he said. “It never occurred to anyone we may be integrated into it as a seller.”

For the present the U.S. economy continues to import more natural gas than it exports.

U.S. Natural Gas Imports & Exports: 1995-2009

4 thoughts on “The U.s. As Natural Gas Exporter?”

  1. Seems to be happening: http://www.pikeresearch.com/newsroom/natural-gas-vehicle-sales-to-reach-3-2-million-units-annually-by-2016

    “Corporate and government fleets are the strongest adopters of natural gas vehicles,” says senior analyst Dave Hurst. “Not only will this trend continue, but in fact fleet sales will increase as a percentage of all NGV sales, representing two-thirds of the total market by 2013. More and more fleet managers are attracted to the lower fuel costs of natural gas, in addition to the opportunity to reduce their vehicles’ carbon footprint.”

    Hurst adds that refueling infrastructure remains a key challenge for the NGV market, and the ratio of vehicles to stations is still too high, which is particularly a hurdle for the consumer NGV market.

    More: http://www.pikeresearch.com/research/natural-gas-vehicles

  2. “So when does this excess supply lead to us running cars on LNG?”

    Never. LNG is too nasty for non-professionals to handle. GTL is, OTOH, fairly cheap and easy, so I would expect that the supply of liquid hydrocarbon fuel would be maintained.

    NG at current market prices is equivalent to $0.60/gal gasoline.

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