{"id":5708,"date":"2026-03-05T22:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T22:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/5708\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T22:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T22:42:07","slug":"how-will-the-war-in-iran-affect-your-utility-bills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/5708\/","title":{"rendered":"How Will the War in Iran Affect Your Utility Bills?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine set off a global energy crisis in 2022, sending prices for oil and gas skyrocketing in Europe and the U.S. for months on end. Many Americans struggled to keep up with their bills, and disconnections<\/a>\u2014when utility companies shut off power or heat because of nonpayment\u2014spiked.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, energy experts fear the Trump administration\u2019s decision to attack Iran could trigger a similar sequence of events. Qatar has shut down production at the world\u2019s largest liquefied natural gas facility<\/a>. Liquefying natural gas allows it to be stored and moved over longer distances than pipelines can accommodate. Shipments through a critical trade route, the Strait of Hormuz, have been cut off. Fifteen percent of the global oil supply and 20 percent of global LNG<\/a> normally pass through this waterway.<\/p>\n

In response, oil, gasoline and diesel<\/a> prices are up, and natural gas prices<\/a> in Europe are surging. The conflict is \u201cwreaking havoc with global gas and LNG markets<\/a>, even more so than oil,\u201d according to analysts at Wood Mackenzie, the global energy and natural resources consulting firm. Asian markets \u201care the most exposed,\u201d but \u201cEurope is also in panic mode,\u201d the analysts said.<\/p>\n

The world hasn\u2019t yet seen disruption on the scale of what happened at the start of Russia\u2019s years-long attack on Ukraine, but that\u2019s where we could be headed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this continues for a full week, that\u2019s the kind of trajectory that we might be on,\u201d said Clark Williams-Derry, energy finance analyst for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. \u201cThe longer this conflict lasts, the more likely we are to see higher prices that people are paying for natural gas.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ukraine war, he warned, led to \u201ca massive transfer of wealth from ordinary households, people who are paying utility bills, to the people who are providing them with fossil fuels.\u201d<\/p>\n

The immediate fallout from the war with Iran illustrates the problems with ramping up U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas without any policy guardrails, he said. The more LNG that America exports, the more domestic natural gas prices are tied to swings in the global market. \u201cIt\u2019s U.S. consumers who are bidding against global consumers for the same gas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

LNG proponents say that exports help keep American allies abroad from having to rely on countries like Russia<\/a> for energy. \u201cU.S. LNG exports strengthen energy security for allies amid growing geopolitical uncertainty,\u201d said Rob Jennings, vice president of natural gas markets at the American Petroleum Institute. \u201cOver the past decade, growth in America\u2019s LNG exports has been outpaced by growth in domestic production, enabling the United States to meet rising demand at home and abroad without meaningfully impacting domestic natural gas prices.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even before the attack on Iran, U.S. natural gas prices were expected<\/a> to rise, \u201cdriven mainly by more demand\u201d from LNG export facilities, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.<\/p>\n

\"Venture\"VentureVenture Global\u2019s Calcasieu Pass LNG export terminal in Cameron Parish, La. Credit: Phil McKenna\/Inside Climate News<\/p>\n

Since more than 40 percent of American electricity<\/a> is generated from natural gas, that means electric bills are also affected by these fluctuations. This is especially true in states that rely more on this fuel for power, like Pennsylvania, Delaware, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

U.S. LNG exports have increased enormously since 2016, with the growth fueled primarily by the fracking boom. The U.S. is now the world\u2019s largest LNG exporter<\/a>, ahead of Australia and Qatar. The second Trump administration has made increasing LNG exports a priority: One of President Donald Trump\u2019s first acts of his second term was to reverse the Biden administration\u2019s pause on permitting new LNG export projects. Several new LNG export facilities<\/a> are scheduled to come online in the next few years, with more planned for the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, for the first time in history, the eight LNG export terminals consumed more gas than all 74 million households that have natural gas utility service,\u201d said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization. Public Citizen calculated that Americans paid $12 billion<\/a> more for natural gas in the first nine months of 2025 than in the same period in 2024.<\/p>\n

In late February, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the first LNG export from the contiguous U.S., the Department of Energy<\/a> praised Trump\u2019s leadership to \u201caccelerate export capacity\u201d during his first and second terms. LNG exports \u201csupport tens of thousands of high-quality, generational jobs while strengthening prosperity at home and for our allies and trading partners abroad,\u201d the department said. Last week, Energy Secretary Chris Wright approved an export expansion<\/a> at an LNG facility in Texas.<\/p>\n

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A group of senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders<\/a>, criticized the administration\u2019s LNG policy a day before Wright\u2019s approval, arguing that it was \u201ccontributing to rapidly rising utility prices for American consumers.\u201d The senators\u2019 letter to Wright noted that some LNG companies have increased their earnings by millions of dollars in the last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The uncertainty caused by war with Iran comes at a time when many Americans are already struggling to pay their utility bills. An unusually cold winter in some parts of the country and the projected demand from data center projects have strained the system. Electricity rates increased by 5 percent<\/a> nationwide in 2025, and in some states, the increase was much higher. In Pennsylvania, for example, rates rose almost 9 percent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All told, Pennsylvanians were paying 46 percent more last year compared to 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have seen a substantial increase in energy prices that are really squeezing Pennsylvanians across the board,\u201d said Elizabeth Marx, the executive director at the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project, an advocacy group that helps people with their bills. \u201cFamilies are really hurting.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the last three years, Pennsylvania has seen \u201crecord\u201d numbers of utility disconnections, she said. \u201cThe last time we saw numbers anywhere in that neighborhood was during the Great Recession.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marx has long been concerned about the \u201cexplosion\u201d of LNG export capacity since 2016 and the role that exports play in higher costs for Pennsylvania households. \u201cLNG is one of the biggest drivers,\u201d she said. \u201cThe more we export LNG, the higher our prices here in Pennsylvania go.\u201d This is despite the fact that Pennsylvania is the second-largest producer of natural gas in the country and one of the largest exporters<\/a> of electricity.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s too soon to know what the long-term impacts of war with Iran will be on U.S. consumers, one winner has already emerged.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear that the oil and gas sector in the U.S. is one of the main beneficiaries of the chaos we\u2019re seeing in global energy markets,\u201d Williams-Derry said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some LNG facilities are poised to make more money than others; it depends on how their pricing is structured. But for the companies well-positioned to make the most of suddenly rising natural gas prices, \u201cit\u2019s a gold rush,\u201d Williams-Derry said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve often described the oil and gas industry\u2019s financial strategy as \u2018pray for war,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThat is how they make money.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAbout This Story<\/p>\n

Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That\u2019s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.<\/p>\n

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Thank you,<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tKiley Bense\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tReporter, Pennsylvania<\/p>\n

Kiley Bense covers climate change and the environment with a focus on Pennsylvania, politics, energy, and public health. She has reported on the effects of the\u00a0fracking boom in\u00a0Pennsylvania, the expansion of the American plastics industry, and the intersection of climate change and culture. Her previous work has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, the Believer, and Sierra Magazine, and she holds master\u2019s degrees in journalism and creative writing from Columbia University. She is based in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine set off a global energy crisis in 2022, sending prices for oil and gas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3749,3750,34,2039,263,271,309,3751,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-5708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-electric-bills","9":"tag-electricity-bills","10":"tag-iran","11":"tag-liquefied-natural-gas","12":"tag-lng","13":"tag-qatar","14":"tag-trump-administration","15":"tag-utility-bills","16":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116178986253234476","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}