WASHINGTON-The United States is on track to become a net exporter of liquefied natural gas by 2016, an energy outlook predicts. The US Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration said it expected a cumulative increase in US natural gas production through 2035. "This primarily reflects increased shale gas production resulting from the application of recent technological advances," the EIA said in its forecast for 2012. The EIA said imports from Canada declined more than 60 per cent as natural gas production in the United States increased. The agency said it expects the United States to export around 1.1 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas per day starting in 2016.
This would make the United States a net LNG exporter by that year. US President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, called for an "all-of-the-above" energy strategy that utilizes "every" source of energy available in the United States. "We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years," he said. The EIA report said offshore natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico stood at around 2.4 trillion cubic feet per year. Shale gas reserves in the United States were estimated at 482 trillion cubic feet. Meanwhile, another EIA report states that an increase in exports of domestic liquefied natural gas could raise gas prices in the United States by as much as 54 per cent by 2018. The report, released by the Energy Information Administration, laid out four scenarios of export-related increases in natural gas demand.
The US Department of Energy requested the study to assess how natural gas exports would affect the country's energy markets. "Larger export levels lead to larger domestic price increases, while rapid increases in export levels lead to large initial price increases that moderate somewhat in a few years," the report states. US Rep Ed Markey, D-Mass., the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee and a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, in response to the EIA report urged the Energy Department to halt the certification of any more export projects "before all impacts on American families and businesses are considered." Nine companies are awaiting federal approval to export about 10 billion cubic feet of LNG per day.
Those proposals, along with Cheniere Energy's already approved plan to export more than two billion cubic feet daily from its Sabine Pass LNG terminal in Louisiana, represents about 14 per cent of the natural gas produced in the United States, the Houston Chronicle reports. "The affordable domestic supplies we've recently developed could soon become a thing of the past if companies are allowed to export large volumes of American natural gas supplies to foreign countries," Markey said in a statement. He said he plans to introduce legislation that would keep more American-made natural gas in the country. Domestically, the price of natural gas has dropped to less than US$3 per million British thermal units, from more than US$15 a few years ago, as technology has made it economical to extract natural gas from dense shale rock.
