Trump’s Embrace of Natural Gas Exports Is Driving Up Energy Bills for Consumers

Despite repeated promises from President Donald Trump on the campaign trail to lower the cost of energy, consumers in the United States collectively paid $12 billion more for natural gas to power their homes over the first nine months of 2025 — about $124 more per family — than they did a year earlier, according to a new report on federal data by the watchdog group Public Citizen.

Thanks to a fracking boom that has polluted communities from Pennsylvania to Texas, the U.S. is the world’s top producer and exporter of “natural” methane gas. But the price of refined natural gas sold to residential customers is rising to record levels under Trump. Almost immediately after taking office, Trump embraced the rapidly expanding natural fossil gas export industry and ordered the Department of Energy to expedite permits for shipping fracked gas overseas.

“Over and over in his stump speeches Donald Trump specifically promised all Americans energy and utility bills would be slashed in half,” Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s energy program and author of the report, told reporters on December 16. “Not only are prices not declining, they are increasing, and we Americans are experiencing an energy affordability crisis driven by high natural gas prices.”

The natural gas export industry already consumes more gas than the 73 million U.S. households that use natural gas.

Rising gas exports are linked to the increase in natural gas prices, primarily from eight liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals where fracked gas is processed into liquid and loaded onto barges for transport. The natural gas export industry already consumes more gas than the 73 million U.S. households that use natural gas, according to Reuters. About 25 percent of the gas produced in the U.S. is exported, either at LNG terminals or through pipelines to Mexico and Canada. That’s up from 5 percent just a decade ago, federal data show.

Flush with gas produced by the fracking boom over the past decade, the industry has rushed to build more LNG export terminals along the Gulf Coast and in southern Louisiana. Environmental groups are currently challenging a contentious state permit for Commonwealth LNG in Louisiana, which would destroy vital coastal wetlands and emit as much greenhouse gas as 14 coal-burning power plants each year, according to the Sierra Club. The proposed location for the export terminal is near two massive existing terminals that have also faced legal challenges from environmental groups over pollution.

“LNG is wiping out the small commercial fishing industry there and replacing it with this giant global export industry,” said Eric Huber, a managing attorney for the Sierra Club, during a press call.

Huber and activists in Louisiana say the buildout of massive fossil fuel infrastructure is destroying wetlands that are critical for coastal restoration and the livelihoods of traditional fishers in an area where residents are already overexposed to petrochemical pollution. A 2024 report by the Environmental Integrity Project found that seven LNG terminals operating at the time violated their air pollution permits over the past three years while emitting millions of tons of greenhouse gases, with state and federal regulators handing out about $1 million in penalties.

“Record LNG exports are driving domestic demand and increasing domestic prices for residential consumers,” Slocum said. “The United States is exporting so much natural gas that the eight export terminals are consuming … more natural gas than all 184 million Americans that get direct natural gas from utilities.”

“What’s clear is Donald Trump’s policies are exacerbating this,” Slocum said, in reference to the rising cost of energy for U.S. residents.

Slocum pointed to President Joe Biden’s decision in early 2024 to temporarily pause permitting for new LNG export terminals while federal regulators updated their standards for determining whether a proposed fossil fuel project is in the public interest. The pause gave regulators time to consider the potential climate impacts and costs to consumers of allowing the LNG industry to build out more export terminals.

Biden’s order was a victory for environmentalists fighting to save Louisiana’s coastal wetlands and waterways as well as consumers of natural gas. However, Trump railed against the permitting pause on the campaign trail and reversed it on his first day in office, signing an executive order directing agencies to deregulate the fossil fuel industry. Under Trump’s appointees, federal agencies have since rolled back environmental protections and pollution controls while Trump attacks the clean energy sector.

Trump also promised to halve electricity bills in his first year, but those have also gone up in 2025 compared to 2024, with households seeing up to a 13 percent increase on average depending on the season.

The affordability crisis has flummoxed Trump, who has attempted to blame Democrats and Biden for the public’s frustration with rising prices. In multiple interviews and speeches, Trump has called the nation’s mounting affordability crisis a “Democrat hoax” even as voters feel the pinch of higher utility bills and grocery prices.

Trump appears to believe that deregulating the fossil fuel industry and allowing more exports will “unleash” domestic production and eventually bring down prices for consumers. The White House continues to boast about low gasoline prices, but the Consumer Price Index calculates that they have fallen about 0.5 percent since 2024. In an Energy Department statement titled “Promises Made, Promises Kept,” the Trump administration says it has achieved “energy dominance” and ended the “Biden LNG export ban” on day one.

Thanks to these changes, “The Energy Department has approved more LNG export capacity than the volume exported today by the world’s second-largest LNG exporter,” the statement said. The Energy Department says the increased exports would bring “prosperity at home and peace abroad,” which Slocum said reflects Trump’s habit of pushing other countries to commit to buying U.S. LNG as the president leverages steep tariffs to renegotiate international trade terms.

“Almost every trade deal he negotiates, he is trying to force countries to buy more U.S. LNG whether they need it or not, because that doesn’t matter to Trump,” Slocum said. “What matters to Trump is bigger numbers for exports because that is going to deliver bigger profits for the LNG export industry.”