President Trump's cabinet is busy rolling back regulations that will make extracting and producing fossil fuels much easier. But who would buy them?
Almost everyone, especially under the threat of tariffs, that's after all.
At the annual Energy Industry Conference in Houston, executives spoke openly about how businesses around the world are trying to buy American liquefied natural gas as a way to help Trump's demands balance trade or face punitive measures.
“If you're a country with a trade imbalance with the US, they're all asking themselves, 'What can we do to level out the arena?'” said Meg O'Neill, chief executive of Woodside Energy, Australia's largest oil and gas company.
They are cutting deals now, she said, “You can say their government is, 'We're taking action.' Her distinctiveness was reverberated by Ryan Lance, CEO of Conoco Phillips, one of the nation's largest oil and gas producers, and other speaker at the conference.
Since President Trump took office, oil and gas companies on almost every continent have hanged the possibility of investing billions of dollars in the United States.
This month, Japanese, Taiwanese and South Korean companies revived the $44 billion idea to build a pipeline and a huge terminal in Alaska, exporting to Asia. Ukraine, which seeks to preserve the supply of weapons from Washington, has shown that it will buy more American gas. South Africa, frozen by Trump, is seeking to cut transactions to expand US companies' drilling rights in the waters.
It is not yet clear whether this will all be converted into solid transactions. But potential deals will lock decades of investment in fossil fuels at a time when the global energy transition to clean energy sources is shaking. Fossil fuel burning is the main contributor to greenhouse gas emissions that dangerously warm the planet.
South Africa has frozen US aid with an executive order that accused them of discriminating against white citizens, but is trying to negotiate a new trade deal with Washington. In that deal, the US will have access to more gas exploration in the region, and South Africa will buy more gas from the US, according to a government spokesman.
Ukraine is desperately trying to win Trump's support in negotiations for a peace deal with Vladimir Putin's development, but in addition to trying to cut trade in mineral revenue, it signaled Washington to buy US gas.
The Ukraine move reflects a wider push in Europe to buy more gas from the US as Trump is involved in the European Union.
India's state-owned gas company, one of the world's fastest growing gas markets, said it would either buy stakes in the US LNG plant or enter into new contracts for long-term supply.
At a meeting in Houston, Sultan Al Jabba, head of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company Sultan Al Jabba, hosted the annual climate change negotiations in the United Arab Emirates, but said his company would soon announce a massive investment in US gas production. “Make your energy great again,” he told a room full of oil and gas executives.
In 2023, shepherd Al Jaber was the first to agree that all countries would “migrate” from fossil fuels by mid-century. However, the key clause in the agreement noted that “transition fuel” (widely recognized as an up-tuned representation of gas) is key to “orderly” the transition.
Potential deals raise climate concerns about foreign policy strategies. Increased gas consumption – Purchase contracts are usually due to decades of fuel – often complicating the carbon-centric pledges made by businesses and countries.
Gas is less carbon dioxide than oil and coal when burned, but is almost entirely made up of methane and is made up of much more powerful greenhouse gases. As the gas industry grows to control the world of fuel trade, US methane emissions are steadily rising.
New US Energy Secretary Chris Wright is a former fracking executive. In an interview in Houston, he said that a temporary suspension on federal approval of new export terminals in early 2024 has made him cautious about investing in US gas, despite the fact that LNG exports have skyrocketed under President Biden.
Wright said he was meeting with future buyers in Europe and Asia, and they all asked, “Can you guarantee that the US will become a reliable supplier in the long term?”
Xi Nan, who leads Rystad Energy's LNG Research team, said the announcement is not inevitable due to the long timeline for developing the gas project.
“Essentially, our forecasts remain unchanged in terms of long-term LNG demand,” XI said. “What has changed is the low forecasts for renewable energy demand.”
As a result, the energy transition will “take longer than you think,” she said.
