Phase II: The Future of LNG for the US and Gulf Coast Economies

The continued growth of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) production and long-distance trade has traditionally been taken as a given by global energy analysts, who have premised their positive estimates on gas being both relatively scarce and demand for it virtually unquenchable. Unfortunately, current conditions in the global energy market suggest that what many have predicted as a near perpetual increase in the volume of traded LNG is in fact a bubble that is now in the process of bursting. This report represents the efforts by the University of New Orleans Transportation Institute (UNOTI) beginning in 2014 to assist the Port of New Orleans (PONO) in evaluating the feasibility and best practices of equipping the PONO for potential storage and shore-side infrastructure for fueling vessels powered by LNG, as well as research into the feasibility of the widespread use of LNG as marine fuel, considering the new United Nation’s International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) MARPOL Annex VI maritime emissions regulations set to take effect in 2020. Additionally, this report examines both the short and long-term factors behind this new thinking about LNG, explore what it implies for the several multi-billion-dollar export projects being built in Louisiana, and the feasibility of LNG as a US export commodity and industrial feedstock to the petrochemical industry. This report concludes by suggesting that development policy aiming to assist LNG export projects are likely misplaced, and that a primary focus on value-added petrochemical manufacturing, with a secondary value as potential for a marine fuel, is a more robust path for the region’s policymakers to take.