American natural gas exporters are planning a new wave of projects to capitalise on supply shortages in Europe and soaring global prices — even as the Biden administration says the goal remains to “transition away” from the fossil fuel.
It marks a potentially dramatic reversal for the US liquefied natural gas export industry, which only last year was idling capacity amid a pandemic-induced supply glut and battling doubts about gas’s future in a low-carbon world.
“Yes, it’s a good thing for American LNG,” Charif Souki, chair of Tellurian LNG — which is hoping to construct a new $15bn export plant on the US Gulf coast — told the Financial Times, referring to the global price spike. “It is going to depend only on whether the infrastructure can be built in the US or not.”