But that very action increases the supply and the price is therefore driven down. Natural gas suppliers do not have the same ability to move their fuel from region to region. It is very expensive to transport natural gas across the ocean. It is not cost effective to fill a tanker with a gaseous product. To make transport feasible, the gas must be converted to its liquid state.
Oil is already in liquid form, so no such processing is required to ship it.
To convert natural gas to a liquid, it must be placed under extreme pressure. The process of converting natural gas to a liquid and then storing it on ship in its liquid form is prohibitively expensive. Therefore, a major increase or decrease in natural gas production in those areas has no effect on U.S. natural gas prices. Similarly, reduced demand for natural gas in Asia has no effect on U.S. supply and demand. This means that natural gas prices can deviate significantly from one region of the world to another, unlike the more uniform prices observed in the more internationally integrated oil markets.