Domestic and international demand drive natural gas production growth

In our Annual Energy Outlook 2026 (AEO2026), we project U.S. dry natural gas production, which accounted for 38% of total U.S. energy production in 2025, will increase significantly over the next several decades, meeting growing domestic and international natural gas demand.

In AEO2026, which projects possible outcomes for the energy sector through 2050, we modeled cases that consider both laws and regulations implemented as of December 2025 and those with alternative policy assumptions affecting electricity and transportation sectors. We also modeled a case that explores the impact of higher power demand, specifically from data centers.

Across most of our cases, we project U.S. dry natural gas production will increase by 20%–40% in 2050 compared to 2025. The Low Oil and Gas Supply and High Oil and Gas Supply cases, which fall outside of this range, demonstrate the impact resource assumptions have on our results.

Most of the growth in production is projected to serve international markets receiving U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG). U.S. LNG export volumes grow significantly through the 2040s, from 15 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2025 to over 30 Bcf/d by 2050 in most cases.

Our LNG export projections are mostly clustered around the Counterfactual Baseline case, with exports highest in the Combination case, where both transportation policies aimed at reducing tailpipe emissions and electricity market policies aimed at curbing emissions from fossil generation are not in place. The absence of these policies increases liquids consumption, resulting in higher Brent crude oil prices. Because LNG prices are commonly indexed to crude oil, U.S. LNG supplies, which are priced based on U.S. natural gas spot market prices, are more economically competitive.

Lower power demand from electric vehicles (EVs) also frees up natural gas that might otherwise be used in power generation for export as LNG. Absence of the power market policies is less impactful for natural gas markets, allowing for higher utilization of more efficient combined-cycle plants that decrease the sector’s natural gas use, leading to additional natural gas supplies that can be sent to international markets.

Projected domestic U.S. natural gas consumption growth also supports increasing production volumes in most cases. The Low and High Oil and Gas Supply cases are again the outliers, where different resource cost assumptions lead to natural gas prices that are high or low enough to markedly change consumer behavior.

We project electric power consumption increases by between 2.9 Bcf/d and 15.2 Bcf/d in 2050 in most cases from the 35.2 Bcf/d consumed in 2025, more growth than in any other domestic end-use sector. Higher overall electricity generation and changes in policy that curb renewables deployment support growing natural gas consumption in the electric power sector.

Although the Counterfactual Baseline case projects domestic U.S. natural gas consumption will increase from 90.8 Bcf/d in 2025 to 108 Bcf/d in 2050, in the Combination case, total consumption is projected to be around 10 Bcf/d lower at the end of the projection period (98 Bcf/d). This difference is almost entirely a result of reduced electric power consumption of natural gas due to lower power demand from EVs. Of this difference in domestic consumption, we project about 7 Bcf/d of supply is instead sent to U.S. export markets as LNG. The remaining 3 Bcf/d difference is not absorbed by another market, leading to the slightly lower U.S. dry natural gas production projections for the Combination case in AEO2026.