Originally published April 21, 2013. Updated July 21, 2026.
The US shale gas boom made shale rock the source of 79% of US natural gas by 2024, and turned the country into the world’s top exporter of liquefied natural gas since 2023. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, the two techniques behind all of it, unlocked oil and gas that used to sit too tight in shale rock for a well to drain on its own. Oil production climbed alongside it, hitting a record 13.662 million barrels a day in 2025. Natural gas also passed coal as the country’s main power plant fuel, in 2016, and the price you pay for gas has swung hard in both directions since the boom took off.
What fracking is
Fracking cracks open shale rock underground by pumping in fluid at high pressure, and horizontal drilling lets that same well turn sideways once it reaches the rock instead of stopping at the bottom of a straight hole. Together, the two techniques reach oil and gas that a vertical well alone couldn’t drain. How much water a well uses, and where that water goes afterward, is covered on its own in a look at fracking’s water use.
How much oil and gas the US pumps now
Shale and other tight rock formations produced 81.2 billion cubic feet of gas a day through the first three quarters of 2024, down about 1% from a year earlier, the first annual dip in shale gas output since the government started tracking it in 2000. Total US dry gas output still came in at roughly 38 trillion cubic feet for the year, or about 103.5 billion cubic feet a day annualized, about flat with 2023 and above the 36.35 trillion cubic feet the country produced in 2022, the prior record.
Oil output grew faster. US crude production hit 13.2 million barrels a day in 2024, 2% above the prior record, more than double the 5.184 million barrels a day the country pumped in 2005 and well above the 5.074 million barrels a day the US pumped in 2008, the low point shortly before shale drilling took off. Output kept climbing from there, reaching 13.662 million barrels a day by 2025. None of the drilling itself is visible from your driveway. What shows up on your end is on the other side of that number, in the price of gasoline at the pump and the gas that might heat your house.
How the US became the world’s top LNG exporter
That top spot from 2023 held through the next year, with the country shipping 11.9 billion cubic feet of LNG a day in 2024, about flat with the year before. Qatar and Australia, its closest rivals, exported less across 2020 to 2024, a longer stretch than the single 2024 figure above (see the table below). Turning gas into LNG means cooling it down until it’s a liquid, dense enough to load onto tankers bound for buyers with no pipeline to the US. Pipeline gas stops at the coastline, and liquefied gas is what gets it the rest of the way.
| Exporter | LNG exports (billion cubic feet a day) | Period |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 11.9 | 2024 |
| Qatar and Australia | 10.2 to 10.7 | 2020 to 2024 range |
Source: EIA, Today in Energy, read 2026-09-25.
That gap is the clearest answer to the energy independence question the shale boom raised in the first place. The US ships more LNG overseas than any other country and pumps a record amount of its own oil, at the same time.
What happened to natural gas prices
Henry Hub, the benchmark price for US natural gas, averaged $8.86 per million BTU in 2008, before a shale-driven glut pulled prices down. It fell to $2.75 per million BTU by 2012, and by 2024 it had reached a record low of $2.19 per million BTU, a figure EIA has also framed as close to an inflation-adjusted record. By 2025 it had climbed back, 56% higher at $3.52 per million BTU.
That round trip is the shale boom’s biggest effect on your bill if you heat with gas or live somewhere that burns it for electricity. A gas bill built on the 2024 low looks a lot different than one built on the 2008 spike, even before anything else about your house changes. The 2025 rebound put a dent in that, but the price is still a fraction of where it sat before the boom got going, and still well below the price levels that prevailed before the 2012 glut.
How gas overtook coal in the power sector
Natural gas passed coal as the country’s top power plant fuel in 2016, when it supplied 37% of summer generation against coal’s 33%. A decade earlier, in 2006, coal still held 46% of summer generation to gas’s 25%, so the switch took about ten years. By 2023, gas supplied 43.1% of US electricity and coal 16.2%, a 26.9-point spread, well beyond the 4-point spread when gas first overtook coal in 2016. That same year, nuclear supplied 18.6% of US electricity and renewables another 21.4%, led by wind’s 10.2% and solar’s 3.9% share of the total.
Preliminary numbers for 2025 put gas around 41% and coal near 17%, a small uptick for coal, not a reversal of the 2016 crossover, and it lines up with the country’s broader decline in coal use. The rest of that 2025 mix runs to renewables at about 24% and nuclear at about 18%, with wind supplying roughly 11% and solar roughly 6.7%.
What the 2024 dip in shale gas means
Shale gas output fell for the first time on record in 2024, dropping about 1% to 81.2 billion cubic feet a day, even as oil production kept setting new highs of its own. A single year of lower gas output doesn’t prove the boom has peaked, and it doesn’t rule that out either.
Gas prices spent most of the years before 2024 near record lows of their own. Whether the 2024 dip reflects that stretch of low prices, the sort of pullback that eases once prices climb, or an early sign that the most productive shale fields are running short of easy gas, is still an open question.
What happens to shale gas production over the next year or two, whether it keeps slipping or turns back up the way oil keeps climbing, is the number worth watching before anyone calls this boom finished. The EIA publishes updated shale gas production figures every month, tracking whether output stays below or climbs back above the 81.2 billion cubic feet a day mark set over the first three quarters of 2024.
