The U.S. will begin exporting more natural gas than it imports during President Donald Trump’s first year in office, according to a report published Wednesday by the Energy Information Administration (EIA).
The country’s status as a net exporter is expected to expand well beyond 2017 because of a growing amount of exports to Mexico and a decline in imports from Canada, EIA’s report noted. The U.S. became the world’s largest natural gas producer in 2009 after the country surpassed Russia.
Mexico meanwhile is updating its pipeline infrastructure to make way for future imports from the U.S. Its appetite for natural gas has grown rapidly, as Mexico’s energy industry expects to increase its natural gas use for electric power generation by about 50 percent over the next five years.
Much of EIA’s report is based on the expectation that the country will continue constructing energy pipelines that crisscross from the U.S. to Canada.
