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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“The current price levels are unsustainable,” 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.