The United States did not become the world’s largest liquefied natural gas exporter by accident. It took about a decade of heavy infrastructure investment, regulatory approvals, and the kind of production scale that only the shale revolution could enable. Ten years ago, the first LNG cargo from the Sabine Pass Terminal marked the beginning of a new export era, and since then, U.S. LNG exports surged from 0.5 billion cubic feet per day in 2016 to 15.0 billion cubic feet per day in 2025, making the country the world’s largest LNG exporter, ahead of both Australia and Qatar. That infrastructure build-out is still accelerating today, with new export trains coming online from Louisiana to Texas. The question for the industry has always been: who are the buyers? Right now, the clearest answer is India.
For most of 2025 and into 2026, Europe absorbed the majority of U.S. LNG as countries there rushed to replace Russian pipeline gas. Europe accounted for roughly 60% to 70% of U.S. LNG through 2025, with consistent off-takers across the United Kingdom, Netherlands, France, Spain, and Germany. Asia has always been in the picture too, but it ran a distant second. That dynamic is now shifting, and the conflict in the Middle East is the reason why.
India imports 60% of its LNG and almost all of its liquefied petroleum gas through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway that has been severely disrupted since the U.S. and Israel struck Iran in late February. The Gulf, which had long been India’s most reliable and cost-effective supplier, suddenly became the most unreliable one. That left India scrambling for alternatives, and the U.S. Gulf Coast was ready to fill the gap.
The May shipping data tells the story plainly. The U.S. exported 900,000 tonnes of LNG to India in May, which accounted for more than 40% of India’s total requirement and represented a threefold increase from the prior month. On the LPG side, the numbers were equally dramatic. The U.S. supplied 630,000 tonnes of LPG to India in May, roughly 60% more than the 380,000 tonnes India received from all Gulf countries combined, according to data from Kpler. For context, LPG is the primary cooking fuel for hundreds of millions of Indian households, making its availability a politically sensitive issue for the government there.
The companies best positioned to benefit from this shift are the ones that already operate large-scale Gulf Coast liquefaction facilities. Cheniere Energy, Inc. (NYSE: LNG) operates the Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi liquefaction facilities with a total combined production capacity of over 53 million tonnes per annum of LNG in operation and has exported over 325 million tonnes of LNG cumulatively as of May 2026. Venture Global, Inc. (NYSE: VG), which operates the Calcasieu Pass and Plaquemines facilities in Louisiana, has been ramping up output as well, with its Plaquemines project coming online in late 2024 and volume growing steadily through the first half of 2026. Both companies are seeing high utilization rates, driven by fee-based long-term contracts and opportunistic spot sales into markets where demand has surged.
The growth in U.S.-to-India energy trade did not begin with the Hormuz disruption. It had been building through diplomatic pressure and trade deal negotiations for months prior. During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the U.S. last year, India committed to raising its energy imports from the United States by $10 billion, reaching a total of $25 billion in the near term. Indian state-owned oil companies followed through early in 2026, signing a structured, one-year contract to import 2.2 million metric tonnes of U.S.-origin LPG, marking the first deal of its kind in the Indian market and using Mont Belvieu as the pricing benchmark. The conflict simply accelerated a commercial relationship that was already developing.
A report from global brokerage Nomura published this week described the U.S. as “the biggest beneficiary” of India’s gas sourcing shift, noting that Washington’s exports to India had grown eightfold from pre-war levels. Nomura analyst Bineet Banka pointed out that the trade dynamic works on both sides, since Washington has been pushing India to reduce its trade surplus with the U.S., and larger energy purchases are the most practical way to do that. Importing LNG from the U.S. is more expensive than sourcing it from the Gulf, but as Banka noted, India does not have many options right now.
There is a longer-term angle to consider as well. The U.S. Energy Information Administration has forecast that U.S. LNG export capacity will nearly double by 2031 compared to December 2025 levels. The pipeline of new projects, including further expansions at Sabine Pass, Corpus Christi Stage 3, and Venture Global’s CP2 development in Louisiana, will give U.S. exporters even more room to grow their market share in Asia. Analysts at Rystad Energy have noted there is meaningful potential for U.S. LNG, LPG, ethane, and propane exports to India specifically, particularly given that infrastructure damage in Qatar raises questions about long-term supply reliability from that region. What started as a crisis-driven supply shift may well end up as a permanent reordering of where India sources its energy, and for the U.S. export sector, that represents a significant commercial opening.
