How did hydraulic fracking make the US the world's top LNG exporter?

In 2023, the famed investment banker and author Mather Simons said that by 2005, the US will get into a long-term natural gas crisis, for which prayer will be its only answer, with many other energy experts concurring with the sentiment at the time. 

ExxomMobil and other major corporations back then acquired many natural gas companies and expanded operations on wild bets that natural gas prices will surge later. 

By 2005, US natural gas production started to fall, with spot prices rising to over $10 per MMBtu. 

What happened later was unexpected.. natural gas producers were attempting to mix hydraulic fracking and horizontal digging, and their success changed everything.

By 2007, US natural gas production was trending incredibly higher, and it led to the biggest uptick in US natural gas production in its history.

A decade later, US natural production surged by 50% compared to 2007 levels, and today it's up by 86% and continues to trend higher, with the US now exporting Liquefied natural gas. 

The expanding natural gas business was so enormous that exports starting in 2016, which were still back them minute compared to Qatar and Australia. 

However, by December 2023, the US exported 91.2 million metric tonnes of LNG according to Bloomberg data, becoming world's top LNG exporter. 

It's once again the cutting-edge and innovative techniques used by US energy companies that broke the barriers, and we saw similar applications with shale oil in recent years.