This is the Friends Fister Debating Society. I'm John Bachelor, breaking news, natural gas, Europe.

I read from Bloomberg in these last hours, gas tankers hauling US fuel crowding Europe bound sea lanes. This is within hours. The number of US natural gas cargo is heading for European ports jumped by one third over the weekend.

There were 20 tankers bearing American gas heading for Europe up from 15 on the day before the Christmas Eve.

Another 14 vessels were headed in the general direction of Europe awaiting final orders. Bloomberg ads, European gas prices, dip for a four straight session on expectations the US deliveries will help ease supply concerns.

Even after the recent slump in prices, prices for the fuel are still ten times higher than a year ago. I welcome Bud Weinstein for a retired former professor at the Cox School of Business at SMU, a fellow of good enough college and assistant director McGuire Energy Institute, who has been my guide for many years on the genius of natural gas,

reducing the carbon footprint, but at the same time providing modestly priced electricity to American homes and here to four to European homes, but not now.

But one of the details over the years, good evening to you is that you recommended America find a way to export our bounty of liquefied natural gas. Is that underway? Have they overcome regulatory barriers to send this rescue flitility Europe? Good evening to you, Bud.

Good evening, John. Yes, absolutely. You're talking about the 20 tankers, setting for Europe, kind of reminds me of D day, but maybe we ought to call this G day, deliberating Europe with liquefied natural gas in the United States.

And as you know, and as your listeners know, there's been a real supply crunch in Europe, partly because of the Europeans refusal to invest in natural gas production in their own continent. And also because of the gains that Russia is playing Russia is a major supplier of natural gas to both eastern and western Europe.

They've been using natural gas as a political tool for a number of years. They're doing it right now. There's also uncertainty about the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was supposed to be up and running, bringing more natural gas from Russia to Germany.

And that's on hold for the time being. So you put it all together and you've got that perfect storm where European businesses and households are really suffering, as you mentioned, they're paying astronomical prices for natural gas.

Like, I'll give you an example here in the United States average gas price is a little under four dollars, a million BTU, which is the way energy content is measured in Europe. It's $27 per million BTU. That's seven or eight times higher than it is here. So just take what that means for home heating costs for electricity.

It's a real mess. And we're helping to bail them out by shipping them a number of cargo's of liquefied natural gas.

Couldn't we do this indefinitely about do we have enough natural gas to develop or to essentially a daisy chain from America to Europe?

Because Russia shows no interest in atturning away from this game playing about Nord Stream 2 and about Ukraine.

We have virtually unlimited supplies of natural gas. Now nothing is unlimited in the long, long, long term.

But we are soon to become number one producer of natural gas in the world. We're already number one.

And secondly, we are projected to become the number one exporter of liquefied natural gas by 2023 or 2024 assuming politics doesn't get in the way.

We do have an administration in Washington right now that has not profess any at least until recently was not professing any love for fossil fuels. Indeed, the Biden administration was literally on non speaking terms with the oil and gas industry. Now that's changed.

We recall a couple of weeks ago after being rebuffed by OPEC when Biden begged them to increase production and then turn to the US oil and gas industry and said, please, please drill more produce more.

We've got to bring these gasoline prices down. So it's it's a very curious situation when it comes to US energy policy.

If the Biden administration just lets the market do what it's doing, we're going to see increasing volumes of liquefied natural gas going not only to Europe, but all over the world.

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