United States LNG in 2024: Still the World Leader, Flat Volumes, Shifting Destinations

According to the United States Energy Information Administration, the United States exported 11.9 billion cubic feet per day of liquefied natural gas in 2024 and remained the world's largest LNG exporter. Australia and Qatar, the next-largest exporters, shipped between 10.2 and 10.7 billion cubic feet per day annually over 2020 to 2024. Russia's exports averaged 4.4 billion cubic feet per day in 2024 and Malaysia's 3.7. Those figures frame a year that looked quiet on total US volumes yet busy on destination shifts and late-year capacity news.

EIA states that United States LNG exports remained essentially flat compared with 2023 mainly because of unplanned outages at existing facilities, lower natural gas consumption in Europe, and very limited new LNG export capacity additions since 2022. In December 2024, Plaquemines LNG Phase 1 shipped its first export cargo, becoming the eighth United States LNG export facility in service. Europe including Türkiye remained the primary destination in 2024 at 53 percent, or 6.3 billion cubic feet per day.

The January 2024 DOE pause on new non-FTA authorisations, documented by the Congressional Research Service, shaped the forward project pipeline even as operating terminals continued to ship. Flat export growth eases, at the margin, near-term feedgas competition with power burn relative to a high-ramp year. The commercial question for 2025 is how quickly new capacity ramps and how European and Asian call on United States cargoes evolves with storage and relative prices.