This is the Kader Daily Podcast for Friday, November 1st, 2019. I'm Caleb Brown.

Why is a longstanding federal law strongly encouraging US territories to import

their liquid natural gas not from Texas but from Russia. It's called the Jones

Act. Cato's Colin Greybao comments. So why is Puerto Rico importing liquid natural gas

from Russia, a geopolitical rival of the United States.

According to new reports, a Spanish-flagged ship called the Catalunya spirit

will arrive in Puerto Rico later this month, possibly as soon as by the time this podcast airs.

And it will discharge its cargo at liquefied natural gas, which will be used by Puerto Rico

for purposes of power generation.

Puerto Rico uses natural gas for about one third of its electricity needs.

And this gas originated in Russia.

The gas was transported from Russia to Belgium and I believe was picked up in Belgium and now it's being transported to Puerto Rico.

And what's interesting about this is this isn't the first time something like this has happened.

Last winter, LNG was imported into Boston that also

originated in Russia and all of this is taking place at the same time that the United States is one of the world's leading exporters of LNG.

So the United States exports liquefied natural gas all over the world.

It sends it to Jordan, Japan, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, all over the place. One place it does not send

LNG over the water to, by ship or other parts of the United States and that's because it's

literally impossible to do so. And is that because there are no ships to

carry liquefied natural gas from port to port among US states? There are plenty of ships in the world.

They're capable of transporting liquefied natural gas,

but there are zero ships in existence

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