Tom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.

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American LNG from gas drawn from beneath rural America and chilled in urban America while creating jobs on both ends will now also protect Poland’s freedom.

Back in September, 2014, I did an interview with Dr. Margo Thorning, senior vice president and chief economist with the American Council for Capital Formation and director of research for its public policy think tank, the ACCF Center for Policy Research. It was all about what LNG would do for us as Americans. I closed the article with this:

My interview with Thorning reinforced just how important natural gas and exports are to maintaining our ability as a nation to compete in a world economy. We cannot grow jobs and wealth without manufacturing and the ability to capitalize on our natural resources. The shale revolution has given us a gigantic step up and LNG exports offer an opportunity to take the next step and lock in US competitive advantages for decades to come. Moreover, the importance of these exports to reinforcing our relationship with European nations, who have the choice of working with us or with Russia, is also critical to our national security and the freedom of countries neighboring that marauding bear.

Two and one-half years later the prescience of Thorning’s observations on the future role of American LNG is stunning. LNG exports have begun and are already growing rapidly. They are creating both rural and urban economic opportunity here and, now, they may well help release Poland from the claws of the Russian bear.

Here’s what I’m talking about, from an article RadioFreeEurope / RadioLiberty published yesterday. It’s entitled “Poland Eyes Buying Gas From U.S. To Cut Dependence On Russia” and reveals exactly what Thorning was talking about (emphasis added):

Poland’s deputy prime minister is exploring reducing the country’s dependence on Russian natural-gas imports by buying liquified gas from the United States.

In a visit to the United States this week, Mateusz Morawiecki, who is also Poland’s minister of economic development, met with U.S. Energy Secretary RIck Perry to discuss purchasing U.S. gas and got a “very positive response,” he told reporters.

Morawiecki told Reuters on April 5 that he reached an “understanding” with Perry to work toward a deal.

Poland, a NATO member, currently gets about two-thirds of its gas from Russia, and has been striving to find alternative sources for national security reasons.

The purchase of gas from the United States would diversify Poland’s energy supplies and increase its energy security, Morawiecki said.

“I am very much concerned. I think that what Russia is doing since invading Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, it is clearly against international public law,” he told Reuters.

“We strongly oppose this expansionary and aggressive policy by Russia. Cyberthreats to the Baltic States and Poland are difficult to overestimate. I believe this is a real threat,” he said.

Poland has a liquefied-natural-gas terminal in the Baltic Sea that opened last year. Morawiecki said U.S. gas from Texas is currently more expensive than liquified gas the country could import from Algeria or Qatar, but he believes a lower price can be negotiated with U.S. suppliers.

A fracking revolution in the past decade turned the United States into a natural-gas superpower, rivaling Russia and other major suppliers around the world. The United States started exporting some of its abundant gas only a year ago and has not as yet sent any to Northern Europe.

Poland’s contract to buy gas from Russia’s state-owned Gazprom expires in 2022.

It’s exciting to see what’s happening as the shale revolution has given America, the land of freedom, an economic sword with which to defend it elsewhere. The thought US shale gas will play such a role is one of the most heart-warming aspects of what’s happened in the natural gas industry over the last decade. Exports of American LNG are creating jobs at home and security abroad. It’s a beautiful thing, yet one fought vigorously every day of the week by fractivist special interests and their elitist billionaire funders who typically live in the comfort of natural gas heated homes in the toniest parts of New York City, San Francisco and elsewhere.