FERC Chairman Joesph Kelliher was so right when he wrote these words in February 2007 commenting on the approval of two LNG import terminals to be built in Pascagoula, Mississippi. 

The North American natural gas market is changing, and changing fundamentally.

But he was so wrong about the change that was underway.

The plain fact is that North American gas supply is no longer adequate to meet North American gas demand. That is true even assuming the eventual construction of an Alaskan natural gas pipeline. Our gas market is no longer a U.S. gas market, and increasingly is no longer a North American market. 

In fact, the change that even then was underway was improved exploration and production techniques that were tapping the vast quanities of gas held in shale across North America. Two years after he spoke the claim was made North America had a 100 year supply of natural gas.

The Chairman was right on another point: we are becoming part of a broader international gas market. But not as he envisioned. We are on the verge of becoming exporters, not importers.