No one should be in doubt: the global energy balance is changing rapidly with profound political and economic consequences for the way countries and regions relate to one another.
During the latter part of last year a consensus emerged that the United States was moving faster than anyone had previously thought to become first energy self-sufficient, and then a net exporter of natural gas. How this has occurred, why it has turned previous predictions of continuing US energy dependency on their head, and how it will change geo-strategic relationships, is only gradually beginning to be understood.
What is happening is that the US domestic energy sector has been
