"An exclusive Inside Climate News analysis found that a single year of greenhouse gas emissions from tankers carrying LNG from the United States more than cancels out the annual reductions achieved through driving all the electric vehicles currently on U.S. roads."
"CAMERON, La. — For a ship the length of nearly three football fields, Energy Intelligence seemed to turn on a dime. With tugboats pushing and pulling at its bow and stern, the 295-meter liquefied natural gas tanker pivoted 180 degrees in the brackish waters of the Calcasieu Ship Channel in late February, preparing to refuel for a trip to the Netherlands.
Its journey is part of a seismic shift that in the past decade has seen the U.S. go from an LNG importer to the world’s largest exporter, fueled by an ongoing boom in hydraulically fractured natural gas. New U.S. export terminals and expansions currently under construction will nearly double existing export capacity in the coming years, while even more projects have been approved.
Scientists have warned that LNG production involves significant greenhouse gas emissions at every step in the process, from methane leaks at wells to the burning of the gas by end users. But there’s been little attention to the impact of emissions from the tankers that ship LNG from the U.S. to other countries.
That too is substantial, an Inside Climate News analysis found. A single year of greenhouse gas emissions from tankers carrying LNG from the United States more than cancels out the annual emissions reductions achieved through all the electric vehicles currently on U.S. roads."
Phil McKenna and Peter Aldhous report for Inside Climate News April 16, 2025.
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