In recent years, American politicians have not only celebrated the rise of the United States as the world's largest oil producer and second largest liquid gas exporter.
They have also fueled hopes of being able to step in with shipments of fossil fuels when demand arises in other countries and Opec oil cartel refuses to expand production.
It went differently.
Winand von Petersdorff-Campen
Economic correspondent in Washington.
Follow I follow
Soaring prices for gasoline, heating oil and gas show that the United States has not been able to isolate itself from global price fluctuations, despite the fracking revolution.
In the meantime, the first politicians are already demanding an export ban for natural gas and oil in order to depress prices at home.
According to the analysts at Rystad Energy, three factors are driving the price of oil: Deliveries from Russia are less secure.
The smaller Southern Druzhba pipeline crosses Ukraine carrying Russian oil bound for Europe.
Sharply rising heating gas prices are causing many customers to switch to oil.
This could already be observed in Asia in the last few months of 2021.
Finally, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are refusing to activate their stately spare capacity to dampen prices.
It's due to the terminals
Even without the Ukraine conflict, the Rystad experts have predicted an increase in oil production in the USA by almost a million barrels (159 liters) to 12.6 million barrels.
In the crisis scenario, according to their forecast, oil prices will remain at a level of 80 to 90 dollars per barrel - this should lead to increased production efforts by American producers.
But the effects would be too small to relieve the strained oil market.
It takes time to increase capacity.
In addition, cost-cutters are now calling the shots in the American oil companies, and they are only hesitant to grant investments after the fracking boom of the past decade was hardly reflected in profits.
In the gas sector, too, Europe should not place too much hope in the United States.
In theory, the US could significantly expand its natural gas production.
The bottleneck, however, is not the deposits, but the liquefied gas terminals: they liquefy the natural gas delivered via pipelines for transport on special ships overseas.
According to Rystad, the terminals are already working at the upper limit of capacity.
Because ships can hardly be loaded anymore, they are increasingly being diverted from their actual destination in Asia to Europe.
Half of the liquid gas now goes to Europe, while deliveries to Asia and Latin America have declined.
How far this diversion of cargo ships can continue is uncertain.
Chinese companies in particular have agreed long-term supply contracts for liquid gas with American suppliers, which is therefore not up for negotiation.