U.S. LNG exports up again in March on global panic buying

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(The Center Square) – U.S. LNG exports hit record-high 11.7 million metric tons in March as new plants in Texas ramped up production while supply disruptions caused by the war in the Middle East drove global gas prices sharply higher, according to preliminary LSEG data.

Asian benchmark LNG prices spiked above $22 per million Btu in March and European prices reached $18.50 MMBtu, creating a $16 to $17 premium over the domestic Henry Hub natural gas price. Current month Henry Hub natural gas futures prices on April 2 settled at $2.80 per million Btu.

At the same time, U.S. natural gas held in storage April 2 stood at 1,865 billion cubic feet, which is 5.4% higher than at the same time in 2025 and 3% above the five-year average of 1,811 billion cubic feet, as domestic prices remained low relative to global benchmarks.

LNG production at state-owned QatarEnergy halted March 18 after an Iranian strike damaged its facilities, taking about 17% of global output offline. The company said the outage could cut output by more than 12 million metric tons per year for up to five years.

In Texas, the start of operations at the Golden Pass LNG terminal, a joint venture between Exxon Mobil and QatarEnergy, along with a ramp up of a production unit at Cheniere Energy’s Corpus Christ LNG, are expected to lead to record-high U.S. output in the months ahead.

The U.S. Department of Energy in mid-March authorized Venture Global’s LNG export facility in Plaquemines Parish Louisiana for an immediate 13% increase in export capacity, bringing an additional 450 million cubic feet per day to global markets. Other export terminals like Sabine Pass and Cameron LNG operated beyond their normal capacity in March.

Cheniere Energy CEO said at the CERAWeek Conference in Houston on March 25 that his company is doing “whatever it can” to increase production.

"We're looking at our maintenance schedules really hard, but at the end of the day, we have to be safe and we have to be reliable. We don't want to sacrifice anything to get that last drop out," Fusco said.

While CEOs like Fusco are running existing plants at maximum rates to sell at historically high prices to buyers in Europe and Asia, the limits of export infrastructure such as pipelines keeps most U.S.-produced gas as home, preventing domestic prices from skyrocketing.

The Energy Department’s weekly Natural Gas Updates for March showed about 105 vessels carrying LNG left Louisiana in March while about 47 vessels departed from Texas. Another 10 ships combined sailed from export facilities in Maryland and Georgia in the month, the data shows.

Europe remained the largest buyer of U.S. LNG in March, taking 7.49 million tons or about 64% of total domestic exports, according to LSEG data.

Analysts at London-based Energy Consultancy Rystad said in a recent report that the United States has become the marginal global LNG producer with the prices of global benchmarks in Europe and Asia increasingly tied to trade at the Henry Hub in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana.

“Therefore, the cost of marginal LNG supply is bound to fluctuate with the price of Henry Hub, implying that a rise in Henry Hub will also lead to a rise in global LNG prices, as we’ve seen so far in 2026,” Rystad Energy said in a recent report.

 The record-breaking pace of shipments from Louisiana export facilities in March will add about $2 million to revenues from state severance tax collections on natural gas production, according to an analysis by The Center Square. The current severance tax rate of 10.52 cents per thousand cubic feet of production will likely reset higher when the 202-2027 fiscal year begins on July 1.

Louisiana's export facilities handled roughly 1.8 million more metric tons in March 2026 than in the same month in 2025, when the severance tax rate was 9.8 cents per thousand cubic feet.