The Biden administration’s pause on new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export permits is over. On February 14, the Department of Energy (DOE) issued an order conditionally granting Commonwealth LNG to export liquefied natural gas from its proposed terminal near Cameron, Louisiana.
So now the LNG buildout is steamrolling ahead, emboldened by the Trump administration’s vow to expand gas production and exports across the board. With this new order, the Energy Department has approved fully 40 LNG export projects since 2016, giving the green light to an estimated export capacity of a staggering 48 billion cubic feet of gas per day (Bcf/d). If all projects are completed and are operated at capacity it would mean shipping abroad nearly half of current domestic production, which reached a record high of 103.5 Bcf/d in 2024.
Building an LNG export terminal requires the acquisition of several important approvals. First the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) must approve the siting and construction of the project and is charged with taking into consideration the environmental and community impacts. (Critics note, however, that FERC greenlights virtually every project it reviews and often fails to consider important impacts, including climate-warming emissions.) Meanwhile, each project must also obtain authorization from the DOE to export the commodity itself. If the exporter intends to ship gas to a country that does not have an free trade agreement (FTA) with the US, DOE must make a determination as to whether the export is in the public interest. (DOE is given significant discretion in setting its public interest determinations, which can involve national security, climate change, jobs, and other macroeconomic issues.)
Both regulatory processes can take years, especially if there are legal challenges. Projects must also reach Final Investment Decisions and secure financial commitments before developers can move forward with construction.
The US has rapidly become the world’s largest exporter of LNG–rising from virtually nothing prior to 2016 to 12 Bcf/d in 2024.
Source: US Energy Information Administration
In addition to the current US export capacity of 12 Bcf/d, there is another 9.7 Bcf/d in further export capacity currently under construction. Phase One of Plaquemines LNG (18 trains totaling a baseload capacity of 9.9 Bcf/d) and Corpus Christi LNG Stage 3 (seven trains totaling 2.04 Bcf/d of baseload capacity) produced their first shipments in December 2024.
There are an additional nine projects that have been fully approved by DOE and FERC, but are awaiting Final Investment Decisions (not shown on the map).
These planned additions would position the US as the world’s top supplier of gas for decades to come. With the majority of LNG export terminals seeking permits sited along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana, what will it mean for Appalachia, the largest gas producing region in the US?
Despite community pushback and several legal hurdles, Trump’s vow to support LNG exports could reignite momentum for projects along the eastern seaboard. Indeed there is renewed interest by industry executives to build LNG export terminals along the Atlantic coast. At his nomination hearing, Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, former CEO of fracking company Liberty Energy, told lawmakers that he’d be supportive of getting LNG export terminals online, “starting with southeast Pennsylvania outside Philadelphia.”
Secretary Wright’s enthusiasm could revive a decade-long effort to build an LNG export terminal in the region. Since 2017, developers behind Penn LNG have been working to line up support for a $6.4 billion LNG project that would export gas produced in the Marcellus basin abroad from Chester, Pennsylvania.
Another long-simmering project sought to export LNG from nearby Gibbstown, New Jersey. Developer New Fortress has faced major community backlash against the export facility, which would ship LNG by truck or rail from a liquefaction plant in northwest Pennsylvania. Cove Point LNG, an export terminal in Maryland that ships 0.8 Bcf/d of gas produced in Appalachia abroad, might also see expansion in the coming years.
Appalachia’s gas producers are poised to benefit from LNG expansions. Despite its distance from the Gulf region, Appalachian gas companies have already signed long-term contracts to ship the region’s gas overseas.
EQT–a top gas producer in the US whose operations are almost all concentrated in the Appalachian Basin–has contracted pipeline capacity to deliver 1.2 billion cubic feet of gas per day to the US Gulf Coast for LNG exports. For comparison, that volume of gas could power half of Pennsylvania’s fleet of gas-fired power plants, which consumed 2.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day in 2023. That’s equivalent to 20% of EQT’s production, signaling not only that the gas giant is betting big on LNG, but that LNG export projects are eager to tap into Appalachia’s abundant gas reserves.
The Appalachian gas giant sees LNG as a crucial part of its growth; in September 2023, EQT announced it had entered a 15-year contract to send a million tons of gas–approximately 48.7 billion cubic feet (Bcf)–each year to the Commonwealth LNG facility in Cameron, Louisiana, which received conditional approval from the DOE in February 2025.
In January 2024, EQT announced another agreement to provide around 24.3 Bcf of gas annually to the proposed Texas LNG facility in Brownsville, Texas. A few months later, EQT negotiated an increase of that contract by an additional 72 Bcf annually to the facility over 20 years, expanding the total agreement to nearly 100 Bcf of gas per year. That amounts to half of the Brownsville facility’s overall planned liquefaction capacity.
Growth in global demand for gas goes hand in hand with production growth in Appalachia, according to industry insiders. In fact, EQT executive David Khani told investors that 70% of incremental US LNG export growth will ultimately need to come from Appalachia.
Not only is Appalachia gas feeding current and future LNG exports, it is also playing a crucial role in replacing natural gas supply in regions previously supplied by the Haynesville and Permian and Eagle Ford basins–gas fields much nearer to the Gulf’s LNG buildout.
Shipping gas south to the Gulf Coast through interstate pipelines means that Marcellus gas could be distributed anywhere along the route, increasing the overall flow of Appalachia gas to key markets in the Midwest and Southeast.
Nowhere is this more evident than the Southeast, where expansions along Transco—the biggest interstate gas pipeline in the US—and the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) are facilitating the flow of Appalachian gas to satisfy the Southeast’s rising gas demand.
EQT CEO Toby Rice told investors during an earnings call last year that the LNG expansion along the Gulf will pull gas south via Transco, giving an opportunity to fill in that supply gap with Appalachian gas via MVP. It’s no surprise, then, that EQT has revived the MVP Southgate expansion project (red line on map), which would increase its capacity by 0.5 Bcf/d and would extend its supply into North Carolina.
Just so, Williams is pursuing several projects along Transco, including the Southeast Supply Enhancement (yellow line), which runs through five states and is designed to boost capacity by nearly 0.5 Bcf/d.
Further south, Kinder Morgan is planning to expand two pipeline systems, the Southern Natural Gas (SNG) system and the Elba Express Pipeline (blue line). Kinder Morgan’s $3 billion proposal would expand capacity along the SNG South Line (green line) across Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia by 1.3 Bcf/d. Crucially, the project would increase the flow of gas to the Elba Island LNG export facility near Savannah, Georgia. In its filings with federal regulators, the developers note that the gas will come from production fields in Pennsylvania and Ohio, in addition to the nearby shale plays in the Gulf states.
Nearby, Boardwalk Pipeline Partners’ Kosciusko Junction Pipeline Project (orange line) and Kinder Morgan’s Mississippi Crossing project (purple line) would connect larger interstate pipelines to increase the flow of gas from gas fields in Appalachia and the Haynesville play into Southeastern markets and LNG terminals in Louisiana.
With gas demand expected to rise in the Southeast and Midwest thanks to the buildout of gas-fired power plants, industrial customers, and current and future data centers, the gas producers in Appalachia will have direct access to these growing markets, further cementing the use of fossil fuels for decades to come and threatening US climate goals.
Within Appalachia, PJM–the non-profit independent system operator (ISO) that manages the power grid in thirteen eastern and midwestern states including Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia–is planning for a massive expansion of gas-fired power generation. FERC has given PJM the green light to pursue development of 50 new gas-fired power plants and, if load growth expectations are met, that figure could rise to 70 or more. What’s worse, the cost of retrofitting these facilities for carbon capture would be astronomical.
While the negative impacts of natural gas on public health, the environment, and the climate are well documented, experts are sounding the alarm over the more immediate impacts LNG’s rise will have on people’s pocketbooks.
A December 2024 report from the Department of Energy found that domestic gas prices might increase by 30% as a result of increasing LNG exports. That translates to average Americans spending hundreds of dollars more on natural gas and electricity expenditures. Pennsylvania’s households, businesses and electric power plants could pay up to $16 billion more on gas bills if the US continues to accelerate LNG exports, according to a recent analysis by Alan Zibel and Public Citizen.
In fact, new research reveals that expansions in LNG exports have already raised utility costs for US households. Household gas prices have increased 52% since 2016, according to Zibel’s analysis of EIA data, with bigger increases in some mid-Atlantic states. In Pennsylvania, where more than half of households use natural gas as the main fuel for their homes, gas prices have increased by 51% since 2016.
Utility bills could rise further as the crush of new demand for steam turbines, transformers, and other hardware associated with gas-fired power drives up the cost of building new units. For example, in 2022, the EIA calculated that the average overnight cost for a typical combined cycle gas plant was $1,176/kw. But, in the last three years, the cost projection for a new similarly-sized facility in Indiana came in at a whopping $3.3 billion, or just over $2,256/kw–a doubling of the cost.
While Appalachia may be thousands of miles from the Gulf’s LNG export buildout, the region will undoubtedly feel its impacts. And, as has been the case ever since the region’s rise as a fracking powerhouse, Appalachian gas companies stand to gain tremendously while residents will bear the brunt of rising costs, worsening air and water quality, and exposure to toxic pollution.