This is not a Drill, Baby.
The U.S. is set to roughly double exports of natural gas in the next five years. Prices and volatility are poised to rise, too.
With the Trump administration’s support, developers are forging ahead with plans to build a flurry of new terminals that liquefy and ship natural gas. President Trump has made LNG exports a cornerstone of his trade policies by tying deals to commitments to buy more U.S. energy.
The administration is calling on drillers not only to fuel these new facilities on top of existing plants, but also to help electrify the reshoring of industries, as well as to power giant data centers.
The hitch: Major gas basins are growing old, and the country lacks the proper infrastructure to ferry molecules where they are needed. The upshot is that American consumers and industries are likely to see higher natural-gas prices and more volatility in the coming years, analysts and executives say. That could be an issue for Trump, who has promised to cut energy prices in half.
“If you want to export all this LNG, if you want data sector growth, all the power demand growth, you’re going to need higher prices,” said Eugene Kim, an analyst at energy research firm Wood Mackenzie. “And that goes in contradiction to what Trump wants, which is lower energy.”
- Growing international demand is causing natural gas prices to rise, which will in turn push U.S. electricity prices higher now that about 40% of U.S. generation comes from natural gas, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
- Natural gas prices are expected to average $4/MMBtu in 2025, and jump to $4.90/MMBtu in 2026, up from $2.20/MMBtu in 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
- While EIA anticipates high gas prices will shift more generation to coal in the short term, IEEFA energy analyst Dennis Wamsted argues the electric industry’s ability to switch back to coal generation is limited.
Wamsted said he no longer sees how most U.S. electric utilities can avoid raising electricity rates given surging natural gas prices and declining federal support for renewable energy.
“I believe that is going to be the outcome here,” he said. “There will be higher prices for everybody, across the board … I don’t see a way around that.”
In March and April, the amount of natural gas consumed by LNG exports equaled about half of all the natural gas used to produce electricity in the U.S., according to IEEFA. U.S. exports of LNG are expected to grow 84% in the next four years, but new gas production has not kept pace with rising demand, Wamsted said. “Economics 101” imply gas prices will reach new heights as producers continue to seek out more competitive markets overseas, he said.
Fossil fuels to dominate global energy use past 2050, McKinsey says – https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/fossil-fuels-dominate-global-energy-use-past-2050-mckinsey-says-2025-10-16/
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/energy-and-materials/our-insights/global-energy-perspective
I’m dubious. Twenty five years is a long time.
Data centers can connect themselves to their own power sources, and building renewables+storage has to be cheaper for them than relying on FF plants. Meanwhile, much of the BRICS and Africa are growing without the continuing cost of buying and burning fuel from other countries when they can live off their own wind and solar.
This article today:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/we-dont-have-time/2025/10/19/russias-coal-collapse-marks-the-end-of-fossil-fuels-post-war-illusion/
I’m not an expert on all this. I just report what I see in the news. But, I suspect the tail end of FF will be longer than desired due to economic growth.