US LNG Production Surge Will Double Exports by 2028: EIA

The projected boom in exports comes as Canadian, Mexican, and American projects come online and federal regulators approve first export permit in 7 months.

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Approval Doesn’t Presage Avalanche Praise, Rebuke, Litigation

North American liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, driven by record production in the United States, are projected to significantly expand over the next five years, according to a Sept. 3 U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecast.

North America LNG “export capacity is on track to more than double between 2024 and 2028, from 11.4 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2023 to 24.4 Bcf/d in 2028,” the report states.

The report notes that its projections are contingent on 10 projects currently under construction in Mexico, Canada, and the United States “beginning operations as planned.”

EIA’s projections follow the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Aug. 31 approval of its first LNG export permit to a non-Free Trade Agreement (FTA) nation in the seven months since the Biden administration imposed a temporary pause on such applications and two months after a federal judge in Louisiana lifted the pause while it is being appealed.

In approving Houston-based New Fortress Energy’s LNG application, DOE’s order said the permit doesn’t increase “total volume of LNG” the company can export and increases U.S. LNG exports to non-FTA nations by 3 percent.

As of Aug. 30, EIA reports DOE has approved 46.45 Bcf/d of natural gas exports in 2024, including 6.7 Bcf/d to Canada and Mexico as “re-exports” to non-FTA nations.

The United States has FTAs with 20 nations that permit LNG to be directly shipped from U.S. ports.

U.S. LNG to non-FTA nations—including the three biggest importers, South Korea, Japan, and China—is primarily shipped through Mexico.

By 2028, EIA estimates LNG export capacity will grow by 9.7 Bcf/d in the United States, 2.5 Bcf/d with three new terminals in Canada, and 0.6 Bcf/d from two projects in Mexico.

The five U.S. LNG projects cited by EIA are Plaquemines (Phase I and Phase II), Corpus Christi (Stage III), Golden Pass, Rio Grande (Phase I), and Port Arthur (Phase I).

In 2023, the United States became the world’s largest LNG exporter, shipping overseas an average of 11.4 Bcf/d, a 12-percent increase over 2022’s domestic LNG exports. LNG is fracked shale gas liquefied for transport.

Bcf/d is one of several metrics used as volume measurements by industry analysts. One Bcf/d is equivalent to 178 million barrels of oil. As described by Investopedia, 1 Bcf/d is “enough to power all of Delaware’s natural gas needs for slightly more than one week.”

According to the International Group of Liquefied Natural Gas Importers, the 11.4 Bcf/d in LNG U.S. producers exported was 21 percent of the global 52.9 Bcf/d LNG market, which grew by 3.1 percent in 2023.

With expanded export and import capacities, and increasing natural gas demand driving growth, analysts in near-uniform consensus projects sustained expansion in the global LNG market.

India-based Mordor Intelligence’s industry report forecasts the global LNG market will grow from $74.6 billion in 2023 to $103.41 billion by 2028, a compound annual growth rate of 6.75 percent across the five-year forecast.

Approval Doesn’t Presage Avalanche

New Fortress Energy’s (NFE) Fast LNG Altamira terminal off Mexico’s Gulf Coast is one of the 10 cited in EIA projections. The terminal will receive U.S.-produced LNG via Valley Crossing Pipeline.

In approving NFE’s permit, DOE said allowing exports to non-FTA countries gives the company flexibility in using its new terminal, operational since July.

A heat exchanger and transfer pipes at Dominion Energy’s Cove Point LNG Terminal in Lusby, Maryland. Cliff Owen/AP Photo

Under the authorization, NFE can export 1.4 million tons a year of LNG to “re-export” to non-FTA countries from Altamira for five years. The company wanted a permit through 2050. It largely exports to Brazil and Jamaica.

“These re-exports can diversify global LNG supplies and improve energy security for U.S. allies and trading partners,” DOE said in the order, noting that authorization isn’t “inconsistent with the public interest.”

The department cautioned that green-lighting NFE’s permit doesn’t presage a general avalanche of approvals for projects pending since the federal government imposed its temporary pause on new non-FTA export applications on Jan. 26.

In justifying the freeze on new permit reviews, the White House said a study was needed to update factors used to evaluate LNG exports. Current standards do not adequately gauge “potential energy cost increases for American consumers and manufacturers,” nor “the impact of greenhouse gas emissions,” specifically, methane, it said.

President Joe Biden never set a deadline for completing the study but DOE Secretary Jennifer Granholm said during spring/summer budget hearings it would be finished by December and finalized in early 2025.

The odds of the study’s rule-making materializing in the Federal Register will be determined by who is elected into the Oval Office and both Capitol Hill chambers in November. If Republicans gain more control after the elections, those odds would be low.

In the meantime, a federal judge’s July 1 ruling makes the temporary pause moot by suspending its implementation until the study is complete.

U.S. Western District of Louisiana Judge James Cain Jr. agreed with Louisiana’s attorney general and 15 other states’ attorneys general who challenged the pause in a March lawsuit.

In his 62-page ruling, Cain said the pause, which he referred to as a ban—a classification that the DOE objects to—was “perhaps the epiphany of ideocracy.”

An LNG tanker is guided by tug boats at the Cheniere Sabine Pass LNG export unit in Cameron Parish, La., on April 14, 2022. (Marcy de Luna/Reuters) — <p><span>An LNG tanker is guided by tug boats at the Cheniere Sabine Pass LNG export unit in Cameron Parish, La., on April 14, 2022. </span><span class="post_caption_credit"><span>Marcy de Luna/Reuters</span></span></p>

Praise, Rebuke, Litigation

NFE’s export permit was one of 14 in limbo under the pause, negatively affecting projects in Louisiana and Texas, House Republicans argued in 2023 and 2024 hearings.

The GOP-led chamber in 2023 adopted HR 1, which prohibits a president from pausing LNG exports by executive order and doing away with most of the federal government’s other renewable energy programs. The bill was never transmitted to the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Sierra Club’s U.S. LNG Export Tracker lists proposed terminal and pipeline projects across the three countries, including nearly 40 in various planning stages.

The American Gas Association, National Propane Gas Association, and American Petroleum Institute (API) are among industry groups praising DOE’s NFE approval, with API in a Sept. 4 X post calling it “step one” in resuming support for “policies that advance U.S. energy leadership, not hinder it.”

“NFE is now able to freely supply cheaper and cleaner natural gas to underserved markets across the world and further our goal of accelerating the world’s energy transition,” NFE chair and CEO Wes Edens said in a Sept. 3 statement.

The decision drew rebuke from climate change groups citing an April Oxfam of America report that estimates the 14 LNG export projects could emit the same amount of greenhouse gas as 532 coal plants.

Oil Change International in a Sept. 3 statement said, “No matter how much the United States invests in renewable energy, any additional [LNG] export infrastructure will undermine domestic and international efforts to prevent climate catastrophe.”

In a series of Sept. 3 X posts, Oil Change International called NFE’s project “reckless,” noting LNG is “made predominantly of methane, which has 80 times the planet-heating potential of carbon dioxide over its first two decades in the atmosphere.”

Food & Water Watch’s Managing Director of Policy and Litigation Mitch Jones said the authorization was “ridiculous.”

The DOE “is under no obligation to approve these ill-advised proposals, now or ever,” Jones said.

All groups vowed to continue fighting in the public square as well as in the courts, a pledge immediately fulfilled with a Sept. 4 lawsuit lodged against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for approving a Louisiana LNG project.

A Southern Environmental Law Center-led coalition argues in its suit filed in the District of Columbia’s U.S. District Court that Venture Global’s CP2 LNG project in Cameron Parish violates the Natural Gas Act, does not identify a public benefit, and would negatively affect Louisiana’s commercial fishing industry.

An Aug. 21 lawsuit filed in Louisiana state District Court by The Sierra Club made similar claims.

The project would connect the Louisiana terminal via an 85-mile pipeline to a natural gas plant in Jasper County, Texas. It cleared FERC in June.