All well and good assuming the EPA doesn’t decide hydraulic fracking causes drinking water pollution, earthquakes, painful rectal itch and/or seasonal depression. I’m not so keen on exports of gas to address the trade imbalance. I’d rather use the cheap energy to fuel a manufacuring boom and export finished goods instead of raw natural resources.
That makes a lot of sense. We do have increasing Chemical plants being built to use cheap ethane and the like for feedstock.
I think the methane production may quickly exceed current demand unless we continue to shutdown coal fired power plants and replace them with natural gas. Much of this year's demand growth in natural gas came from power plants.
We need to keep the natural gas supply growing to make enough for significant growth in vehicle fueled by natural gas. My 2¢, exporting in the early stages allows the economics to grow the supply market. When we grow our demand enough to take up that slack (and reduce more crude oil consumption), exports would then start to diminish.
Sometimes it becomes a chicken and the egg discussion. The industrial and transportation consumers don't invest money for facilities and infrastructure until the supply is large enough to support them. The supply doesn't grow until there is enough demand to keep price support above the cost of additional supply.