As a follow-up to the natural gas summit in June, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said last week the Bush administration plans to sponsor a “Global Liquefied Natural Gas Summit” in the United States later this year, inviting countries that use LNG as an energy resource. The date and location of the conference were not announced.

“We need to follow up on some of the suggestions that we heard” at the June summit in Washington, DC that addressed the potential gas supply shortfall facing the nation, said Abraham. “The Global LNG Summit will provide another forum through which we can examine additional options to increase our liquefied natural gas [LNG] supplies,” he noted in a press statement.

The planned summit will explore global gas resources, proposed LNG supply projects, export and import terminal facilities, LNG market growth over the next two decades, market opportunities, barriers to development of global LNG markets, and the concerns and issues facing producing and consuming nations as they try to promote an LNG market, according to the Department of Energy (DOE).

LNG “has until recently occupied a small niche” in the U.S. gas market, but LNG imports are expected to help fill a growing gap between domestic gas production and demand, the department said. In the past two years, the U.S. has imported LNG from Trinidad, Algeria, Australia, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and a number of other foreign countries.

LNG imports are and will be key to supplying gas to “supply-constrained U.S. coastal markets” and augmenting domestic supplies in the nation’s pipeline system, the DOE said. For example, “LNG can account for as much as 40% of supply in the New England area during peak winter demand periods.”

There currently are three active LNG import terminals in the continental United States, located in Everett, MA (Boston Harbor), Lake Charles, LA, and Elba Island, GA. A fourth import terminal at Cove Point, MD is expected to be reactivated possibly in August, provided it passes a final inspection by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

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