HAVE YOU HUGGED A FRACKER TODAY? Shale Transforms The Global Gas Market.

Or perhaps more accurately, American shale gas is helping to create a global gas market. For years, natural gas needed pipelines to make its way from seller to buyer, and owing to that, most natural gas contracts were long-term and often linked to the price of oil.

But thanks to liquified natural gas, suppliers can now superchill gas and put it on cargo ships to send halfway around the world, making the gas market more like that of its kindred hydrocarbon, oil. As a result, the differences between regional LNG prices has begun to narrow—the so-called “Asian premium,” more than 50 years old, is starting to evaporate. American shale gas is ready to expedite this transition to a more fungible, global gas market. . . .

U.S. shale is also helping to get rid of destination requirements for LNG cargoes, which will allow intermediaries to buy and then re-sell LNG to the highest bidder. That will help make the market more liquid, and will reduce regional price variation as well.

And it’s reducing carbon emissions much more than the preening of European nations.