The United States exported record amounts of liquefied natural gas in 2021, with exports rising 50% on the year due in large part to heightened demand from Europe and Asia, as well as the expansion of U.S. liquefaction capacity.
The dramatic increase comes as Russia’s war in Ukraine has led Europe to scramble to secure energy alternatives and reduce its dependency on Moscow — an effort that, in the short term, has forced many countries to rely more heavily on fossil fuels.
In total, exports averaged roughly 9.7 billion cubic feet per day in 2021, according to data published Monday in the Energy Information Administration’s Natural Gas Monthly.
Exports to Europe also increased in March and April 2021, following a colder-than-anticipated winter that “significantly” reduced stored natural gas supply. Europe’s low inventory also triggered higher-than-anticipated U.S. exports in the fourth quarter of 2021, the EIA report found.
The report comes after President Joe Biden and European leaders announced a new plan to increase shipments of LNG to the European Union amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.
That plan capped a monthslong seismic shift underway in the U.S. energy industry that has been accelerated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The invasion sent the EU, which depends on Moscow for 40% of its gas, racing to find energy alternatives.
In the near term, leaders have acknowledged the alternatives will almost certainly include burning more coal and importing more fossil fuels — recasting the role that some energy suppliers had been prepared to play after Biden won the presidency promising to move the country away from carbon-emitting fuel sources.
Rystad Energy Vice President Sindre Knutsson said the EU plan represents a “U-turn” from the bloc’s previous purchasing decisions, which he said “had stopped negotiating with U.S. developers for LNG due to [environmental, social, and governance] concerns.”
He added: “Now, however, it appears that energy security has trumped ESG concerns — at least temporarily.”
Mike Sommers, the CEO and president of the American Petroleum Institute, said: “We welcome the president’s focus on expanding U.S. LNG exports to our European allies during this crisis, and we applaud the administration’s continued leadership in ensuring a unified international response to maximize pressure on Russia through additional sanctions.”
The Marcellus Shale Coalition said on Twitter that “Europeans have depended on Russian natural gas for far too long, threatening energy security and environmental progress. American natural gas is the cleanest on the planet, with a 65 percent lower methane intensity rate than Russia’s.”
Still, some Republicans argued Biden’s announcement does not go far enough. Sen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican, said the timeline proposed in Brussels is “too long to cripple Putin’s war machine in Ukraine.”
“In order to effectively sever his revenue stream, we must cut off Putin’s oil and gas sales globally by imposing secondary sanctions on the entirety of Russia’s financial sector,” he said.
