LNG Exports: The Latest Pipedream

Lately the papers have been full of calls for the US to export natural gas to use as a "weapon" against Putin in the Crimean Coup Contest, based on the assumption that Russia is interested in Crimea (and other parts of Ukraine) for the gas pipelines.  There are several serious problems with this line of reasoning, but I'm going to focus on the most basic one: the US doesn't extract enough gas to export LNG.

The difference between historical rates of extraction + imports (~10% of total flow) and consumption + exports (~6% of total flow) (through pipelines to and from Canada and Mexico) has not exceeded 6% since 2001, when conventional gas extraction in the US reached a secondary peak.  That is to say that all of the gas we drill and frack and import from Canada is already spoken for.  Don't believe me?  Check out the weekly storage inventories at the EIA:

If there was plenty to go around, why would our stocks of it be lower than any winter in the last decade?

The whole premise that the US could be a net exporter of gas is based on the idea that shale gas extraction is going through the roof, and is responsible for the increase in gas extraction since 2005 or so.  The reality is a little more nuanced.  This graph shows the extraction rates of gas from different types of reservoirs in the US:

Yes, that purple line is rising fast, but look at the rest of the picture.  Conventional gas extraction has declined by 30% since 2006, negating most of the gains from fracking shale wells.  With prices stuck to the $4 floor, it's unlikely that drillers will be able to continue the extraction gains of recent years.  With unrelenting decline rates upward of 30% per year in most cases, prices would need to be a lot higher to keep that purple line from flattening out, as many drillers are backing away from shale gas extraction already. 

The real kicker is that so much of these hollers for exports are coming from politicians.  All it would take would be a quick read of the results summary page in this report (pdf warning) to see how politically stupid it is to essentially be calling for higher energy prices for Americans in an election year, right when much of the country has been having a hard time getting ahold of propane to keep warm.