Thursday, January 5, 2012

Natural Gas Imports Three Times Greater Than Exports

Just 5 years ago the conventional wisdom was that natural gas imports would increase substantially, because US gas production would decline and increasingly be unable to meet domestic demand. Yet another example of conventional wisdom proven unwise.

Five years later domestic production has instead increased, and US net imports of gas have dropped from 16% to 11% of gas consumed here. Most of the gas imported comes from Canada. A small amount of LNG is imported mainly from Trinidad.

The US has for many years exported comparatively small amounts of natural gas also to Canada and Mexico via pipelines. The US has no LNG export capability, though several facilities are being developed.

Exports were 728 billion cubic feet in 2005 and since then grew to 1.1 trillion cubic feet. By comparison US natural gas imports have declined from 4.3 trillion cubic feet to 3.7 trillion cubic feet. Consequently, imports of gas are more than three times greater than exports. All data is from the EIA.

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