“Yep, we are going to be a gigantic importer of oil and a gigantic exporter of natural gas.”
Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s “Mad Money”

What Could Possibly Be Wrong About That?

The Oregonian’s Steve Duin makes it clear that not only is something wrong with the proposed conversion of LNG import terminals, like Jordan Cove in Coos Bay, to LNG export terminals, there is something deplorably wrong about it. Duin says, “It’s a jaw-dropping contradiction, a classic bait-and-switch. It’s a thumb-in-the-eye of energy independence and the sort of numbing stupidity that, T. Boone Pickens argues, will confirm our legacy as ‘the dumbest generation.’”

Exporting natural gas to the UK, EU and Asia will drive up prices in the United States. Prices in Europe and the United Kingdom are triple those in the U.S., and Japan, after the earthquake and tsunami, is paying five times the U.S. price. Natural gas in the U.S. trades at about $4 per million Btu, while Asia pays at least $14, and Japan is buying at $20. The huge LNG carriers (highly specialized tankers) can haul more than $40 million dollars worth of LNG across the Pacific on each trip. Just imagine the mind-boggling profits! What could possibly be wrong about that?

Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, an advocate of natural gas, told the paper that exporting large amounts of natural gas overseas would not only be a mistake but a security issue that would mean “we’re truly going to go down as the dumbest generation.”

“It’s bad public policy to export natural gas — a cleaner, cheaper domestic resource — and import more expensive, dirtier OPEC oil,” he said.
So, what could possibly be wrong about switching the Jordan Cove LNG Import Terminal to the Jordan Cove Export Terminal? For Williams Partners L.P., Fort Chicago Energy Partners and PG&E (the owners of the terminal and pipeline) it would be a cunning business deal.

But, for all the rest of us, those of us who would lose our land to the pipeline, and be forced to pay for dredging, docks, tugs, security, and environmental clean-up… and run the risk of a catastrophic disaster…it would just be really dumb.