Infrastructure constraints and a slow pace of project approvals have hampered natural gas production growth, but rising output is coming – albeit at a slower pace and higher price, industry executives said earlier this month in Houston.

Goldman Sachs’ Samantha Dart, head of natural gas research, said dry gas growth was the “single biggest contributor” of domestic growth in 2018-2019. However, bottlenecks have once again emerged after an earlier buildout in Appalachia, where the Marcellus and Utica shales accounted for 34% of all U.S. output in the first half of 2021.

The constraints, combined with a difficult political environment for building pipelines to move supply to demand centers, mean the gas market “can’t really count on that to drive growth significantly at...