Chill methane to −162°C and it shrinks 600-fold — small enough to ship anywhere on earth. That trick made natural gas a global commodity, made the US the world's top exporter, and quietly tied the price of heating American homes to cold snaps in Asia. Here's how the chain works.
Related: the gas price forecast · US storage · price history since 2000.
Liquefied Natural Gas — natural gas chilled to −162°C (−260°F), which shrinks it to 1/600th of its volume so it can be shipped in insulated tankers instead of pipelines. At the destination it's regasified and fed into the local grid. LNG is what turned natural gas from a regional, pipeline-bound fuel into a globally traded commodity.
The United States became the world's largest LNG exporter in 2023, overtaking Qatar and Australia — a stunning reversal for a country building import terminals 20 years ago. US Gulf Coast plants (Sabine Pass, Freeport, Corpus Christi and others) ship shale gas worldwide; Qatar's massive North Field expansion will contest the top spot later this decade.
Exports link Henry Hub (last close $2.698/MMBtu) to world markets: every new liquefaction plant adds demand for US gas, and outages work in reverse — when the Freeport LNG plant exploded in 2022, US prices FELL (trapped supply) while European prices rose. As export capacity grows, US consumers become more exposed to global price shocks.
No. LNG is methane, liquefied by extreme cold for bulk shipping. Propane (LPG) is a heavier gas that liquefies under mild pressure — the barbecue-tank fuel. CNG is methane merely compressed, used in some vehicle fleets. Different molecules or states, different infrastructure.
LNG itself doesn't burn as a liquid and isn't stored under pressure; spilled LNG evaporates rather than exploding like pressurized gas. The industry's safety record over 60 years and ~100,000 cargoes is strong, with no major cargo-loss disaster at sea. The real hazards are industrial — vapor clouds near a leak (the 1944 Cleveland accident predates modern design) and plant incidents like Freeport 2022.