New Shipbuilding Rules Could Derail U.S. LNG Export Boom

Yes, the problem is real. The United States couldn’t build an LNG carrier if you handed it the blueprints, the steel, and a polite head start. The shipyards lack the capacity, the workforce lacks the expertise, and this is not the sort of gap you close between one set of inaugural balls and the next. Even two presidencies won’t do it. This is generational work—measured in decades, not campaign cycles.

As for crews, there isn’t a single U.S. team with meaningful experience running an LNG carrier. That, at least, could be fixed faster—though “faster” in this case means merely less glacial.

But here’s the twist: the whole chest-beating theatre about “U.S. vessels for U.S. LNG” might accidentally produce a silver lining. By bottlenecking exports, domestic gas pressures will spike, driving prices in the Lower 48 down to the point where it’s practically begging entrepreneurs to start energy-intensive industries at home.Better still, America could finally drag itself into the not-so-modern era of gas-powered heavy transport. LNG trucks, buses, and other industrial workhorses are ancient, proven tech—older than some of the senators who will insist it’s “too experimental.” Roll it out in earnest, and oil consumption drops, emissions improve, and you leave your successor something more tangible than another ribbon-cutting photo op. That could be done in a single term—or at least built to a point where the current occupant of the Oval Office can take credit for part of it.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/New-Shipbuilding-Rules-Could-Derail-US-LNG-Export-Boom.html

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