Little more than a decade ago, the United States imported
much of its natural gas. Today, the nation is tapping into its own natural gas
reserves and producing enough to support most of its current needs for heating
and power generation, and is beginning to export natural gas to other
countries.
The trend is expected to continue, as new methods are
developed to extract natural gas from vast unrecovered reserves embedded in
shale. Natural gas can be used to generate electricity, and it burns cleaner
than coal.