ALL INPredictions
Last updated Nov 29, 2025
Prediction
Chamath
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Chamath @ 00:17:53Wrong
Due to a 6–7 year under‑investment cycle, new large‑scale investment in U.S. domestic natural gas (including shale and offshore) starting in 2022 will not materially increase supply or generate attractive returns for roughly 6–7 years (i.e., before ~2028–2029), and major U.S. natural‑gas producers will, as of 2022, refrain from committing significant new capital to expand U.S. nat‑gas, shale, or offshore production.
Energy independence is it takes too long. And we went through a massive capital under-investment cycle over the last 6 or 7 years. And so, you know, in order to start this up, you need to have started actually putting money in the ground 6 or 7 years ago. And the problem today is if we put money into the ground now, that's not going to yield any sort of return on invested capital for another 6 or 7 years. And so when you look at these nat gas companies, every single one to a name has basically said, we are not going to put any incremental capital into US, domestic nat gas or shale or even offshore.View on YouTube
Explanation

Chamath’s claim has two key parts: (1) new large‑scale U.S. gas investment starting in 2022 wouldn’t materially increase supply or generate attractive returns for ~6–7 years (i.e., not before ~2028–2029), and (2) major U.S. gas producers were not going to put incremental capital into U.S. natural gas, shale, or offshore. Both are inconsistent with what has actually happened since early 2022.

  1. U.S. natural‑gas supply did increase materially within 1–3 years, not 6–7.

    • EIA data show U.S. dry gas production hit a record 103.6 Bcf/d in 2023, up from prior years, and both output and demand are projected to keep rising into the mid‑2020s. (reuters.com)
    • Marketed U.S. natural‑gas production reached a record 113.1 Bcf/d in 2023, with Texas, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, West Virginia and New Mexico driving the growth; production in Texas alone rose 7% year‑over‑year. (inspectioneering.com)
    • Output continued at very high levels into 2024 (roughly flat to slightly higher than 2023), indicating the system did respond with additional supply well before 2028. (hydrocarbonprocessing.com)
      These records came only about 1–2 years after his February 2022 statement, not 6–7 years later.

  2. Producers did commit significant new capital to U.S. gas and LNG after 2022.

    • Global upstream oil and gas capex rose 39% in 2022 to about $499 billion—the highest since 2014—with further increases in 2023–24. While still framed as “capital discipline,” this is a clear reversal of the prior under‑investment and contradicts “no incremental capital.” (ief.org)
    • The IEA notes a new wave of LNG investment, led by the U.S. and Qatar, that will significantly expand global LNG export capacity in the second half of the 2020s—again implying substantial new gas‑linked capital commitments. (iea.org)
    • Concrete U.S. gas/LNG projects:
      • Cheniere’s Corpus Christi Stage 3 LNG expansion: Cheniere took a positive FID in June 2022 on >10 MTPA of new LNG capacity and issued full notice to proceed to Bechtel. Cheniere explicitly targeted delivering “much‑needed volumes” by the end of 2025, implying roughly a 3–3.5‑year lag from FID to material new supply. (bechtel.com)
      • NextDecade’s Rio Grande LNG Phase 1: NextDecade reached FID in July 2023 on three trains (17.6 MTPA), backed by about $18.4 billion in project financing, with first operations expected around 2027. (bechtel.com)
    • The IEA and industry data also show upstream investment and M&A in U.S. gas and shale increasing materially in 2022–24, not being frozen. (iea.org)
      These are large, U.S.‑based natural‑gas investments directly contradicting the statement that “every single” company was refusing to put incremental capital into U.S. nat‑gas or shale.

  3. Returns and payback periods are proving shorter than 6–7 years.

    • For LNG megaprojects, published schedules show expected first exports 3–5 years after FID (e.g., Corpus Christi Stage 3 by end‑2025 from a 2022 FID; Rio Grande LNG Phase 1 in 2027 from a 2023 FID), not 6–7 years. (bechtel.com)
    • For shale gas and associated gas, wells typically generate production and cash flow within months, which is consistent with the rapid rise in U.S. dry gas output in 2022–23. (mrt.com)
    • The IEA and other analyses highlight that 2022–23 were extraordinarily profitable years for upstream oil and gas, with record cash flows and large shareholder distributions—evidence that returns on recent investments materialized far sooner than 2028–29. (iea.org)

  4. U.S. gas has already played a major global role far earlier than his timeline.

    • By 2023, the U.S. had become the world’s largest LNG exporter, with exports roughly 12–15% higher than in 2022, enabled by high U.S. gas production and expanding LNG infrastructure. (forbes.com)
      This outcome—substantial U.S. gas volumes reaching global markets within about a year of his comment—undercuts the notion that new or expanded U.S. gas supply couldn’t matter for many years.

Because (a) U.S. gas supply and exports did increase materially within a few years, (b) major U.S. gas and LNG players did commit tens of billions of dollars of new capital after 2022, and (c) the project timelines and realized profitability clearly contradict a universal 6–7‑year lag to returns, the prediction that new 2022‑era investment would not materially boost supply or generate attractive ROIC until ~2028–2029—and that companies would not commit such capital—has not held up. On balance, this makes the prediction wrong, even though the full 6–7‑year window has not yet elapsed.