BETTER out than in. For the first time in 50 years, the US will build a plant to export natural gas. Gas producers hope this will help them offload an unprecedented gas glut, which has slashed prices to economically unsustainable levels.
Texas-based will at its Sabine Pass site in Louisiana. This will convert natural gas into liquid that can be shipped abroad, and could be ready by 2015 after . The US, historically an importer of gas, could , says the .
This is all down to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which is used to extract gas from otherwise uneconomic shale. Fracking has been so successful that , causing prices to .
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鈥淭he current price levels are unsustainable,鈥� says of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in the UK. Exporting the excess may be the only way for fracking companies to make money.
