By Tim Pleasant @ Shutterstock.com
Joe Biden and the radical progressives he has planted in the White House want to end the use of clean, safe, domestic natural gas and move to less reliable, often Chinese-produced “green energy” production. This would be a massive mistake. At Forbes, Robert Rapier outlines America’s natural gas dominance, writing:
The U.S. dominated global natural gas production until the 1980s, at which time it ceded the lead to Russia. The Middle East has also grown its natural gas production at a rapid pace over the past 50 years and was on a trajectory to overtake the U.S. and Russia as the world’s leading natural gas-producing region.
But then the fracking boom in the U.S. reversed years of decline and began to boost production in 2005. Natural gas production in the U.S. doubled from 2005 to 2022, which pushed the U.S. back into the global lead among natural gas producers.
In 2022, U.S. production grew by 3.6% to a new all-time high of 94.7 billion cubic feet per day (BCF/d). This new record eclipsed the previous record set in 2021. The U.S. retained a commanding 24.2% share of global production, followed by Russia (15.3% share) and Iran (6.4% share).
To put U.S. natural gas production into perspective, 2022 production was greater than all Middle East natural gas production (69.8 BCF/d; 17.8% share).
Although the U.S. maintains a substantial lead over other countries, over the past decade Iran, China, Australia, and Azerbaijan have all grown natural gas production at a faster average annual rate.
U.S. consumption has grown rapidly over the past 20 years as power plants have turned increasingly to natural gas as both a replacement for coal-fired power and a backup for new renewable capacity.
The net impact of growing natural gas supplies and conversion of power plants has caused natural gas to become the fastest-growing fossil fuel. Over the past decade, global natural gas consumption has grown at an average annual rate of 2.0%, versus 0.9% for oil and 0.2% for coal.
Global natural gas demand fell in 2022. This decline was driven primarily by a double-digit decline in Europe, a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The only other major declines in demand took place in 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and then during the 2008 housing crisis, after which consumption growth returned to its normal trend. U.S. demand grew by a robust 5.4% in 2022, more than double the 10-year average growth rate.
Another result of the boom in natural gas production has been substantial growth in the gas exports of certain countries. U.S. exports, both via pipeline and as liquefied natural gas (LNG), have surged over the past 10 years. U.S. LNG exports grew last year to 104.3 billion cubic meters (BCM). For perspective, in 2010 that number was 1.5 BCM. U.S. LNG export growth over the past decade has been an astounding 63.3% per year on average.
Read more here.
Read more about the debacle of renewable energy here.
Originally posted October 17, 2023.
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