Voya’s energy experts take a deep dive into the emergence of liquefied natural gas as a globally traded commodity, and the ascension of the U.S. as an LNG superpower—along with the risks and rewards of investment in the growing market for LNG infrastructure.
Made in America
Decades ago, there was a joke told in Houston bars of a geologist who returned home from a trip abroad seeking oil. In the debrief with her boss, she explained that she had both bad news and good news—the bad news was that she failed to find oil, but the good news was that she failed to find natural gas. Old jokes aside, natural gas has become a major portion of the global energy diet, thanks to technological innovation and robust demand for cleaner sources of energy.
In this quarter’s special topic, Made in America, we will explore the natural gas industry’s transformation from a series of localized markets limited by logistical constraints into a global trade that brings clean, affordable energy to the masses. We will provide a brief overview of the natural gas value chain, discuss how the proliferation of liquefaction technology enabled natural gas to become a global trade, and review how the shale revolution and other factors caused LNG to grow from a nascent commodity to a major portion of the global energy diet.
Made in America is the second edition in a series exploring the broader energy complex. Given that natural gas is widely viewed as a “transition fuel,” we believe this is an appropriate topic to explore before we begin our discussion of renewable energy in the next edition of Energy & Infrastructure Quarterly.