Failure of US bid to flood Europe with Gas from Fracking

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 by TheFreeOnline      A few months ago US officials were openly boasting that they would steal the market for Russian gas in Europe by replacing it with their own LNG now flowing from the devastated fracking fields of America.
But in recent weeks not a single cargo of Frack Gas has reached Europe..What went wrong?
It seems that with so much anti Russian hysteria  they overlooked the price difference. . Gas shipped from the first US LNG export terminal was at one point priced in Rotterdam at $7.85 to $8.35  per mbtu  while the average Euro price was $ 5.35, (May 2017 European price, see Climate-lethal US frack-gas Footnote 3) .Even the rabidly anti Russian Baltic Republics seem to have shut up about bashing Putin with US gas, while Rotterdam has signed up as the trans-shipment center for cheap LNG from the new Russian LNG plant in the Arctic.


Frack-Gas is the same as normal gas, only that it’s up to 3 times more lethal than coal for the climate. Because extracting it requires fracturing shale in thousands of small wells with ultra toxic chemicals causing massive methane leaking.


Two of the biggest customers at present of  US fracking gas , Shell and Gas Natural, who have 20 year ‘take or pay’ contracts, have been shipping most of  their gas instead through the Panama canal to the Far East, where prices until now have been up to $3  per mbtu higher.

US fracking gas and oil depends on almost cost free loans and near immunity from water and air pollution laws and clean-up costs as well as a blind climate change denial policy.
The business, which has made the US nearly selfsufficient  in ‘natural’ gas, LPG and oil for now,  is often seen as a patriotic push to conserve US supremacy as the petrodollar scam wobbles  and the right to ‘infinite debt’ comes into question.Ironically the first giant LNG export plant in Sabine Pass, Louisiana, was first hit a glancing blow by the classic ‘climate change hurricane’ Harvey. . Though the company Cheniere claimed there was no damage there was still a queue of LNG tankers waiting to load at the port a month later and LNG journals were rejoicing that things were ‘getting back to normal’.  (see Recovery Continues as Sabine Pass)

Cheniere forced to close two Sabine Pass LNG tanks following dangerous  leak

Then there is the ongoing leaking tank disaster. The 6 mega plant ‘trains’ at Sabine Pass have been built in record time. Too fast it seems because last week the company was ordered to close down two of the five immense tanks where the gas is compressed by 600 times and held at minus 150 C until loaded onto the tankers. Continue reading “Failure of US bid to flood Europe with Gas from Fracking”

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