Using Liquid Natural Gas to Refuel the U.S.

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At the turn of the century, growth in the american energy sector had leveled off. Major oil producers like exon mobile and chevron had staked out the gulf of mexico for most all the oil and natural gas it could yield. The united states was already importing around one fifth of its annual consumption, mostly from canada. There is another way to move natural gas around, though. If you cool it down to minus 260 degrees fahrenheit, it transforms into a liquid. This liquefied natural gas takes up about one six hundredth of the sp that regular gas does,. which means you can load it on to tanker ships and send it across the ocean.

It was a long-shot bet on liquid natural gas, but it paid off handsomely — and turned the United States into a leading fossil-fuel exporter.

The journalist Jake Bittle delves into the storied career of Charif Souki, the Lebanese American entrepreneur whose aptitude for risk changed the course of the American energy business.

The article outlines how Mr. Souki rose from being a Los Angeles restaurant owner to becoming the co-founder and chief executive of Cheniere Energy, an oil and gas company that specialized in liquefied natural gas, and provides an insight into his thought process: “As Souki sees it,” Mr. Bittle writes, “the need to provide the world with energy in the short term outweighs the long-term demand of acting on carbon emissions.”

In a time of acute climate anxiety, Mr. Souki’s rationale could strike some as outdated, even brazen. The world may be facing energy and climate crises, Mr. Souki told The New York Times, “but one is going to happen this month, and the other one is going to happen in 40 years.”

“If you tell somebody, ‘You are going to run out of electricity this month,’ and then you talk to the same person about what’s going to happen in 40 years,” he said, “they will tell you, ‘What do I care about 40 years from now?’”

This story was written by Jake Bittle and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.