WASH­ING­TON–A do­mes­tic nat­ur­al gas boom al­ready has low­ered US en­er­gy prices while stok­ing fears of en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter.Now US pro­duc­ers are poised to ship vast quan­ti­ties of gas over­seas as en­er­gy com­pa­nies seek per­mits for pro­posed ex­port projects that could set off a re­newed fren­zy of the much-de­bat­ed kind of drilling known as frack­ing.Ex­pand­ed drilling is un­lock­ing enor­mous re­serves of crude oil and nat­ur­al gas, of­fer­ing the po­ten­tial of mov­ing the coun­try clos­er to its decades-long quest for en­er­gy in­de­pen­dence. Yet as the in­dus­try looks to prof­it from for­eign mar­kets, there is the spec­tre of high­er prices at home and in­creased man­u­fac­tur­ing costs for prod­ucts from plas­tics to fer­til­iz­ers.Com­pa­nies such as Exxon Mo­bil and Sem­pra En­er­gy are seek­ing fed­er­al per­mits for more than 20 ex­port projects that could han­dle as much as 29 bil­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas a day.

If ap­proved, the re­sult­ing ex­port boom could lead to fur­ther in­creas­es in hy­draulic frac­tur­ing, a drilling tech­nique al­so known as frack­ing. It has al­lowed com­pa­nies to gain ac­cess to huge stores of nat­ur­al gas un­der­neath states from Col­orado to New York, but it al­so has raised wide­spread con­cerns about al­leged ground­wa­ter con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and even earth­quakes.

The drilling boom has helped boost US nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion by one-third since 2005, with pro­duc­tion reach­ing an all-time high of 25.3 tril­lion cu­bic feet last year, ac­cord­ing to the US En­er­gy In­for­ma­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In re­cent months, how­ev­er, pro­duc­tion has be­gun to lev­el off as the glut of nat­ur­al gas keeps US prices down. In re­sponse, pro­duc­ers have be­gun push­ing to ex­port the fu­el toEu­rope and Asia, where prices are far high­er.Ap­proval of all the projects cur­rent­ly un­der re­view by the En­er­gy De­part­ment could re­sult in the ex­port of more than 40 per cent of cur­rent US pro­duc­tion of liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas, or LNG, which is gas that's been con­vert­ed to liq­uid form to make it eas­i­er to store or trans­port.US of­fi­cials al­so must con­sid­er com­pe­ti­tion from coun­tries such as Cana­da and Aus­tralia, where new LNG ex­port ter­mi­nals al­so are be­ing pro­posed. The fa­cil­i­ties cost bil­lions of dol­lars and take years to com­plete.

The prospect of a ma­jor ex­pan­sion of US gas ex­ports has tan­ta­lized busi­ness groups and law­mak­ers from both main po­lit­i­cal par­ties, and they're urg­ing the Oba­ma ad­min­is­tra­tion to move faster to ap­prove the projects as a way to cre­ate thou­sands of jobs and spur eco­nom­ic growth. In­creased ex­ports al­so would help off­set the na­tion's enor­mous trade deficit.But con­sumer groups and some man­u­fac­tur­ers that use nat­ur­al gas op­pose ex­pand­ed ex­ports, say­ing they could dri­ve up do­mes­tic prices and make man­u­fac­tur­ing more ex­pen­sive. Many en­vi­ron­men­tal groups al­so op­pose LNG ex­ports be­cause of fears that in­creased drilling could lead to en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age. (AP)