Heartened by a brief mention of liquefied natural gas exports by President Barack Obama, the new head of the US trade group for shale gas producers said Thursday he thought Obama should hasten a permitting process that has issued only two permits thus far.
"The great news, here in America, is that by 2020 we'll be a net exporter of natural gas," Obama said Wednesday evening at a fundraising speech in Chicago. "We will over the next couple of decades have the capacity to be energy independent for the first time, incredible change."
"Obama's behind this," America's Natural Gas Alliance CEO Marty Durbin told roughly 100 lobbyists and trade industry representatives Thursday at the American Gas Association's monthly Natural Gas Roundtable in Washington.
"We'd like to see a little faster pace on the permitting side," Durbin admitted.
There are roughly a score of companies waiting for approval from the Department of Energy to export gas to countries that do not have a free trade agreement with the US -- the bulk of the gas-consuming world. Only two permits have been approved as being in the national interest: Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass terminal in Sabine Pass, Louisiana, and Freeport LNG's Quintana Terminal in Freeport, Texas. Freeport is a joint project of retired oil and gas executive Michael Smith and ConocoPhillips.
A newcomer to the ANGA job (Thursday was his 29th day), Durbin gave the standard shale gas stump speech about the environmental benefits of natural gas and its potential to create jobs, but stayed away from controversy during the question-and-answer session afterward.
Asked about the petrochemical industry's reluctance to see unlimited LNG exports, Durbin said he'd tell Dow and other chemical makers that America's gas producers can supply enough inexpensive gas to their factories while still exporting to get the benefit of much higher world prices.
"We can do both," Durbin said.
"We aren't going to attack coal," Durbin said when asked if ANGA would strike out at competing fuels on an environmental basis. "The market will decide. We don't need to single out any other industry."
