The United States had record natural gas consumption of 24.13 Tcf in 2010, the highest since the Energy Information Administration (EIA) started keeping records in 1973, according to trade data released by the EIA in its March energy review.

And the gain came from domestic production. Only 11.1% of gas consumed in the U.S. during 2010 was from imports — down from the peak of 16.4% in 2007, according to import/export records kept by the Energy Department.

The only other years when U.S. demand came close were 2007, when consumption was 23.10 Tcf and 2008 which came in at 23.27 Tcf. Demand in 2009 fell off to 22.84 Tcf, the agency said.

The gain came on U.S. dry gas production as imports continued to slide lower. EIA estimated that dry gas production jumped 5% to 21.57 Tcf last year from 20.58 Tcf in 2009 due in part to the growing shale gas development throughout the country.

The EIA reported that marketed gas production, which includes natural gas liquids, rose 4% to 22.56 Tcf in 2010 from 21.60 Tcf in 2009.

On the import side, the 2010 market share was the smallest since 1993, when the figure was 10.6% for the year. U.S. natural gas imports — both liquefied natural gas (LNG) and pipeline gas from Canada — fell to 2.56 Tcf in 2010 from 2.68 Tcf in the prior year, according to the EIA.

In the peak import year of 2007 LNG imports hit 771 Bcf while pipeline deliveries from Canada were 4.7 Tcf for a total of 5.5 Tcf.

In 2010 only 431 Bcf of LNG was imported and a little more than 2 Tcf came in through pipelines from Canada.

©Copyright 2011Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.