DAVID BLACKMON: Why The 10-Year Anniversary Of US LNG Is Worth Celebrating

It is impossible to overstate the importance of the chart at this link, a friend posted on X this week.

The chart in question is the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s graph on U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) gross exports from 2015 to 2027.  It starts at a big fat zero in 2015, creeps up to about 2 billion cubic feet per day (Bcfd) by 2017, then skyrockets: 4 Bcfd in 2018, 6 in 2019, 8 in 2020, 10 in 2021, 12 in 2022, 14 in 2023, 16 in 2024, 18 in 2025, and it’s forecasted to hit 20 Bcfd by 2027. That’s not just a line on a page; it’s a testament to American ingenuity, shale revolution grit, and the ineffectiveness of those who tried to stop it.

I’m old enough to remember – heck, I wrote about it in real time – when several European countries, led by the ever-enlightened France, were scrambling for legal ways to ban imports of American LNG back in 2016. Why? Because most of the gas came from that supposedly dirty word: fracking.

But the world changes — fast-forward a decade, and those same nations are guzzling U.S. LNG like it’s fine Bordeaux, all while patting themselves on the back for ditching Russian gas. Is it hypocrisy? Well, sure, but some aspects of the world never do change.

The key milestone came 10 years ago when, on Feb. 24, 2016, Cheniere Energy Inc. shipped its first cargo of shale gas-derived LNG from the Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana. That inaugural load aboard the Asia Vision headed to Brazil – a trivia tidbit for you energy nerds. At the time, the U.S. was still a net importer of natural gas, reliant on foreign supplies to keep the lights on. But thanks to the fracking boom in places like the Permian Basin and Marcellus Shale, the nimble, innovative U.S. oil and gas industry flipped the script.

By 2023 – a blink-of-an-eye span of just seven years – America had become the world’s biggest LNG exporter, pumping out roughly a quarter of global supply. And with new projects firing up, projections show the U.S. claiming about a third of the market by 2030. The economic and geopolitical benefits this shifted reality provides are, again, impossible to overstate.