About a year ago, I was advocating that we pump more oil to provide fuel to the EU (Okay, NATO) nations.  In particular, it was fracking production that would make the difference.  That way Europe would stop relying on Russian suppliers.  While no one officially joined in the chorus, it’s clear the powers that be did.

Because here’s the headlines appearing in various newspapers. And, the fracking community (Texas, Louisiana)  has been liquefying their natural gas production and sending that product to Europe- for power and for home heating purposes.

That means that natural gas is pumped out of the ground, treated (to remove water and impurities), transported by pipeline, chilled, and then loaded onto a ship.  (When the LNG [liquefied natural gas] arrives in Europe, the LNG is decompressed as natural gas.)  That decompression is effected either on  on dry land or viaconnecton to  another ship.  (To speed up utilization of the gas, much of Europe is using ship technology, since building an extraction facility takes time and money.)

In just one year, our exports of LNG to Europe have more than doubled.  Those imports- and the relatively warmer air temperatures that prevail in Europe- have made tremendous differences in the European fuel supply situation.

Right now, the US has 7 liquefaction plants- with a capacity of about 13 billion cubic feet per day- able to supply  LNG  (To put that in perspective, that volume is about 10% of the daily US gas production.)

There are clouds on the horizon, though.   Our frackers are finding fewer new wells.  That means production levels will be dropping.  As  opposed to the past decade, when fracking production rose from 7.2 to 13 million barrels a day.   (This rate of increase continued until the pandemic hit).  From that point on, production growth has been reduced to 1/3 the previous rate.

(Please note however, that many fracking firms cut back on their activities because their stockholders had requested it.  Not because they were lacking success in finding new sources.; rather their investors had imposed pressures on the fracking companies to curtail spending and limit growth in favor of generating higher returns. To me, that means, we don’t really know if this slowdown is due to elective choices or our inability to find other new great sources.)

But, it’s clear Europe may have to seek out other sources of natural gas if this condition continues.