Liquefied Natural Gas

Natural gas has a lot going for it. It burns cleaner than other fossil fuels, producing about half the carbon dioxide of coal. Thanks to new discoveries and the U.S. shale boom, it’s cheap and plentiful. But there’s a catch: Gas is tricky to transport from the often-remote fields where it’s found to where it’s needed — places such as China, India and South Korea. In many regions, pipelines simply aren’t practical. The solution? Turn the gas into a liquid by super-cooling it to minus 162 degrees Celsius (minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit). Liquefied natural gas, known as LNG, gets loaded onto massive ships and transported around the world. This high-tech process has transformed natural gas into a mobile, freely traded commodity and reshaped the politics of global energy.

America’s natural gas is now available on world markets, thanks to the gas released through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and exported as LNG. The fastest-growing buyer has been China, though it’s now threatening to impose a 25 percent tariff on U.S. LNG amid an escalating trade war. In Europe, shifting to LNG is critical for countries such as Lithuania and Poland that are looking to escape the pipeline politics of buying gas from Russia. LNG is also helping to offset dwindling gas output from the North Sea. Demand has improved after a 50 percent price drop since 2014 in a key global benchmark made the once-premium fuel more competitive with dirtier oil and coal. And while much of the talk just a year ago centered around a massive supply glut, soaring demand from China and emerging importers such as Pakistan has sparked new warnings of a coming shortage if more multibillion-dollar projects aren’t built soon. More countries are trading in LNG, with 40 nations importing it and 19 exporting at the end of 2017. Jordan and Egypt are turning to LNG to fuel electricity generation as prices fall and import terminals become less expensive to build. The gas is also used to power ships and trucks.