America
Obama Administration Blocking Natural Gas Exports
The U.S. has been dubbed the Saudi Arabia of natural gas but the federal government is stopping its availability for foreign trade, costing our economy.
Y BY MARITA NOON
ou know something big is happening when Demo- crats and Republicans join forces to fight environmen-
tal groups and chemical companies staunchly opposing U.S. energy devel- opment.
Hydraulic fracturing — dubbed
fracking, extracting shale gas — is transforming the energy landscape. And the anticarbon fuel lobby is doing everything it can to stop it. Whether environmentalists or free-marketers prevail may determine whether the United States can ever attain its dream of energy independence. In the past five years, America has
gone from being an importer of natu- ral gas to producing more than it can use. As a result, natural-gas prices in the United States have plummeted more than 60 percent since 2008. The turnabout has been breathtak-
ing. Less than a decade ago, big energy producers were spending billions to build terminals to facilitate the import of natural gas from abroad. But now that fracking has saturated the United States with low-cost, domestically pro- duced natural gas, those terminals are mostly idle. To save their stranded investment,
the energy companies have proposed converting those same facilities into liquefied natural gas (LNG) export
16 NEWSMAX | MARCH 2013
ENERGY ABUNDANCE Natural gas exports could free U.S. dependence on foreign oil. So far, only one company, Cheniere, has been granted a permit necessary for the task.
terminals. The liquefied form is eas- ily transportable. The United States would become a seller, and the work required to achieve the conversion would employ thousands of workers. So far, companies have filed 17
applications for LNG export termi- nals with the Department of Energy (DOE). But the DOE has awarded only one permit so far, to Cheniere Energy Partners’ liquefaction and export proj- ect in Cameron, La. Environmentalists and their
friends in the Obama administration say opening up new markets for natu- ral gas will only lead to more of the fracking they so bitterly oppose. More- over, keeping natural-gas prices in the United States artificially low will dis- courage U.S. fossil-fuel development. The environmentalists have a pow-
erful ally on their side: industries that use a lot of natural gas, a key compo- nent in fertilizer production, plastics
manufacturing, electric-power gener- ation, and bulk chemicals. Those com- panies want to keep gas prices as low as possible — whether doing so con- tributes to U.S. energy independence or not. Higher gas prices could hurt the U.S. economic recovery, they say. In August, the James A. Baker
III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University addressed that concern. It issued a study concluding, “LNG exports will not likely produce a large domestic price impact.” Among other factors, the study
pointed to the increasing use of frack- ing technology by nations around the globe. That means supplies worldwide will continue to increase, keeping pric- es relatively low. “Today’s spare capacity, constant improvements in technology, and new discoveries will likely maintain downward price pressure,” Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of govern-
SABINE PASS TERMINAL/COURTESY OF CHENIERE ENERGY / PUMP STATION/AP IMAGES
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