US stance on trade limits freedom to export its gas around the world
The most important way how Natural gas is freedom gas is for the US itself. Who would have thought that the US might one day become an energy exporter with energy independence beckoning on the horizon? Who would have thought that China would buy US oil and gas one day? But the much more important battle is not in China – it’s on the home soil. The US has a chance to use more of its own gas in order to bring oil imports even further down. Those oil imports are a drain on the national economy – money out for not much in return except black gold and unstable countries on the client list. US shale gas for US vehicles cleans the US air, creates US jobs and US investment. Those bucks stay at home and help rebuilding an industrial sector that has been on life support for a long time. Cheap clean energy and smarts might bring a new American age.
The American energy system “allows for molecules of US freedom to be exported to the world”, its Department of Energy touted on the opening last week of the Freeport liquefied natural gas export (LNG) facility. But as the Trump administration’s trade war widens, George Orwell might have observed that one person’s freedom gas is another person’s slavery. The energy industry is now embroiled on four fronts in this mercantile struggle.
