What role will LNG imports play in helping to alleviate the natural gas supply crunch?
LNG will become an essential element in balancing the market. There are several reasons that have come together to bring LNG to the fore and hold out the prospect that natural gas becomes the world’s second-largest global energy business — after oil. One is that there is a lot of natural gas in the world that is stranded and that countries and companies want to monetize. Of course, countries want to monetize their gas reserves because it increases their national revenues. The second reason is that over the past six or seven years, LNG costs have come down by as much as 30%, driven by technological advances in liquefaction and shipping. The third reason is that the world has made a real shift. In the ’70s, the whole effort was to drive natural gas out of the power market, and now natural gas is the favored fuel for new electric generation. Is there concern that the U.S. could be become as dependent on natural gas imports as we have on crude imports? Yes. That will be an inevitable ques
