Via Matein Khalid in agbi.com: Since 2016 the US has transformed into the world’s largest LNG exporter, eclipsing Australia and Qatar. Donald Trump is now determined to achieve global energy dominance as he exploits the geopolitical leverage conferred by those exports in his relations with Europe, Asia and the GCC. At a time when the US is already the world’s largest oil producer, pumping 13.5 million barrels a day (mbd) against Saudi Arabia’s 9 mbd, Trump’s ambition to increase natural gas production by 60 percent will have a significant impact on the trade flows and geopolitics of the global LNG market over the next five years. The sheer scale of US natural gas production in the past two decades, from reservoirs in North Dakota to Texas’s Permian Basin, has meant that US prices averaged $3.50 per million BTU (British thermal unit), 70 percent below the spot LNG prices prevailing in Europe and Asia.
