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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine set off a global energy crisis in 2022, sending prices for oil and gas skyrocketing in Europe and the U.S. for months on end. Many Americans struggled to keep up with their bills, and disconnections—when utility companies shut off power or heat because of nonpayment—spiked.
Now, energy experts fear the Trump administration’s decision to attack Iran could trigger a similar sequence of events. Qatar has shut down production at the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facility. Liquefying natural gas allows it to be stored and moved over longer distances than pipelines can accommodate. Shipments through a critical trade route, the Strait of Hormuz, have been cut off. Fifteen percent of the global oil supply and 20 percent of global LNG normally pass through this waterway.
In response, oil, gasoline and diesel prices are up, and natural gas prices in Europe are surging. The conflict is “wreaking havoc with global gas and LNG markets, even more so than oil,” according to analysts at Wood Mackenzie, the global energy and natural resources consulting firm. Asian markets “are the most exposed,” but “Europe is also in panic mode,” the analysts said.
The world hasn’t yet seen disruption on the scale of what happened at the start of Russia’s years-long attack on Ukraine, but that’s where we could be headed.
“If this continues for a full week, that’s the kind of trajectory that we might be on,” said Clark Williams-Derry, energy finance analyst for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “The longer this conflict lasts, the more likely we are to see higher prices that people are paying for natural gas.”
The Ukraine war, he warned, led to “a massive transfer of wealth from ordinary households, people who are paying utility bills, to the people who are providing them with fossil fuels.”
The immediate fallout from the war with Iran illustrates the problems with ramping up U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas without any policy guardrails, he said. The more LNG that America exports, the more domestic natural gas prices are tied to swings in the global market. “It’s U.S. consumers who are bidding against global consumers for the same gas,” he said.
“I’ve often described the oil and gas industry’s financial strategy as ‘pray for war.’ That is how they make money.” – Clark Williams-Derry, Energy Finance Analyst Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis
LNG proponents say that exports help keep American allies abroad from having to rely on countries like Russia for energy. “U.S. LNG exports strengthen energy security for allies amid growing geopolitical uncertainty,” said Rob Jennings, vice president of natural gas markets at the American Petroleum Institute. “Over the past decade, growth in America’s LNG exports has been outpaced by growth in domestic production, enabling the United States to meet rising demand at home and abroad without meaningfully impacting domestic natural gas prices.”
But even before the attack on Iran, U.S. natural gas prices were expected to rise, “driven mainly by more demand” from LNG export facilities, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Since more than 40 percent of American electricity is generated from natural gas, that means electric bills are also affected by these fluctuations. This is especially true in states that rely more on this fuel for power, like Pennsylvania, Delaware, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana.
U.S. LNG exports have increased enormously since 2016, with the growth fueled primarily by the fracking boom. The U.S. is now the world’s largest LNG exporter, ahead of Australia and Qatar. The second Trump administration has made increasing LNG exports a priority: One of President Donald Trump’s first acts of his second term was to reverse the Biden administration’s pause on permitting new LNG export projects. Several new LNG export facilities are scheduled to come online in the next few years, with more planned for the future.
“Last year, for the first time in history, the eight LNG export terminals consumed more gas than all 74 million households that have natural gas utility service,” said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization. Public Citizen calculated that Americans paid $12 billion more for natural gas in the first nine months of 2025 than in the same period in 2024.
In late February, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the first LNG export from the contiguous U.S., the Department of Energy praised Trump’s leadership to “accelerate export capacity” during his first and second terms. LNG exports “support tens of thousands of high-quality, generational jobs while strengthening prosperity at home and for our allies and trading partners abroad,” the department said. Last week, Energy Secretary Chris Wright approved an export expansion at an LNG facility in Texas.
A group of senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, criticized the administration’s LNG policy a day before Wright’s approval, arguing that it was “contributing to rapidly rising utility prices for American consumers.” The senators’ letter to Wright noted that some LNG companies have increased their earnings by millions of dollars in the last year.
The uncertainty caused by war with Iran comes at a time when many Americans are already struggling to pay their utility bills. An unusually cold winter in some parts of the country and the projected demand from data center projects have strained the system. Electricity rates increased by 5 percent nationwide in 2025, and in some states, the increase was much higher. In Pennsylvania, for example, rates rose almost 9 percent.
All told, Pennsylvanians were paying 46 percent more last year compared to 2018.
“We have seen a substantial increase in energy prices that are really squeezing Pennsylvanians across the board,” said Elizabeth Marx, the executive director at the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project, an advocacy group that helps people with their bills. “Families are really hurting.”
For the last three years, Pennsylvania has seen “record” numbers of utility disconnections, she said. “The last time we saw numbers anywhere in that neighborhood was during the Great Recession.”
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Marx has long been concerned about the “explosion” of LNG export capacity since 2016 and the role that exports play in higher costs for Pennsylvania households. “LNG is one of the biggest drivers,” she said. “The more we export LNG, the higher our prices here in Pennsylvania go.” This is despite the fact that Pennsylvania is the second-largest producer of natural gas in the country and one of the largest exporters of electricity.
While it’s too soon to know what the long-term impacts of war with Iran will be on U.S. consumers, one winner has already emerged.
“It’s clear that the oil and gas sector in the U.S. is one of the main beneficiaries of the chaos we’re seeing in global energy markets,” Williams-Derry said.
Some LNG facilities are poised to make more money than others; it depends on how their pricing is structured. But for the companies well-positioned to make the most of suddenly rising natural gas prices, “it’s a gold rush,” Williams-Derry said.
“I’ve often described the oil and gas industry’s financial strategy as ‘pray for war,’” he said. “That is how they make money.”
