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> The government can easily decide to prioritize the domestic market and limit exports. They can, and have done this in the past, e.g. the US ban on export of

• danenania 4y ago
  "Not exporting and consuming gas domestically at lower prices incurs an opportunity cost as the same gas could have been sold for more aboard. So net-net the people will pay for such a policy choice." I don't think it's so simple. Cheap energy can make entire industrial sectors viable that otherwise wouldn't be. You could easily end up ahead by putting that energy into production of goods that are higher up on the value chain rather than exporting it directly.
  • geertj 4y ago
    > I don't think it's so simple. There will be higher order effects, there always are. I don't think the second order you brought up above changes the argument either. If investing in a certain industrial sector is desirable, then why not sell gas at the international market price, and use the extra proceeds to do the investment at the level that makes sense. That way you can at least tune the investment to a level that makes sense, rather than having it depend on the delta between the local and global market price which will depend on a ton of other factors. Note that I'm not saying that's always bad to protect a local market. The assertion was that North America has enough gas causing it to be isolated from the global market pricing, and I'm still very skeptical about that claim.