“THE BARBARIANS ARE AT THE DOOR” - The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future - page 35

heating. Operators of regulated power plants worried they wouldn't be
able to pass on increased gas costs to their customers. Chemical manu-
facturers, who have benei ted from a glut of ethane, were concerned that
it will instead be shipped to their competitors overseas; steelmakers,
experiencing a boon from cheap gas-i red electricity, didn't want that
to change. Nor had it escaped environmental groups and local skeptics
of fracking that natural gas exports required natural gas, and that more
production meant more risk. Even some national security hawks found
the prospect of gas exports perplexing. At er all, wouldn't it be bet er
to get of oil by i nding a way to put natural gas into American cars
and trucks?
But there's also a lot of upside to allowing exports, beyond the poten-
tial to shake up global markets. Set ing aside the mat er of who wins
and who loses, there's lit le question that gas exports would be good for
the economy as a whole: far more money would be made producing
and selling gas overseas than could be made trapping it in the country
to keep prices low. 39 Indeed, although many will claim that gas is bet er
used in manufacturing or power plants than in shipping it overseas, the
choice is misleading: the main impact of blocking natural gas exports
would likely be to keep the gas in the ground. 40
h e United States also benei ts on the whole from reinforcing an
open system for world trade, particularly in energy—something it's
pursued for decades. And because U.S. gas exports are something that
other countries such as Japan and India want, they give the United
States special leverage in trade talks that it wouldn't otherwise have. To
the extent that gas exports could also help insulate consuming countries
in Europe and Asia from political arm twisting by suppliers in Russia
and the Middle East, this would be good for U.S. foreign policy, freeing
up would-be allies to work with the United States to deal with tough
situations, rather than having them hold back for fear of economic
retaliation.

T he hot est speculation about the geopolitical consequences of the

shale gas boom doesn't revolve around exports, though; it focuses
on whether it might be possible to use natural gas to power American
cars and trucks, and by doing that, decrease U.S. reliance on oil.