Last week the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources held a hearing on natural gas and Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) exports.  On the whole, the discussion was a good one, covering issues of natural gas availability, safety of fracking fluids, domestic uses of natural gas, and jobs created in the natural gas industry and related chemical manufacturing industry.  But there were some elements of the discussion that should leave Senators and the public somewhat puzzled.

Perhaps most puzzling were statements associated with the desirability and viability of potential government control of natural gas prices and markets.  The idea is seemingly simple; keep domestic natural gas prices low.  Doing so will, of course, benefit domestic consumers of natural gas.  Those consumers include the public and large manufacturers like Dow Chemical, which is a heavy user of natural gas and whose CEO, Andrew N. Liveris, testified at the Senate hearing.

This blog has already pointed to the conundrum that the US faces with oil and gas prices.  We are not an island that is insulated from global energy prices.  Yet, a puzzling premise of the hearing appears to be that our domestic abundance of natural gas allows us to behave as if we were an island.  And that is the second puzzling aspect of the Senate Committee’s hearing.

Since the US has the potential to become a net exporter of natural gas because of its domestic abundance, the government can stand in the way of exports by limiting permits for exports of LNG.  Of course, damping the supply of domestic natural gas has several unintended, potential consequences.  Those include stifling job growth in the energy industry, stifling domestic production of natural gas, causing prices to rise for domestic consumers and increasing the balance of payments by restricting exports.

The third and final puzzling aspect of the Senate hearing is why the Senate or the federal government should try to pick winners and losers among potential job creators.  Keeping the domestic natural gas price low perhaps will positively impact the US chemical industry and the number of jobs it creates with increased production.  At the same time, keeping natural gas prices low and restricting exports of natural gas have the potential to stifle job growth in the domestic energy industry.  It will do so by restricting supply for US natural gas with prices held artificially below global levels.

More hearings from the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources are likely.  We should watch closely for testimony and Senate recommendations that may tend to distort US markets and negatively impact economic growth with restrictions on job growth in any industry, including the natural gas industry.