Kinder Morgan, Inc. (KMI) Q2 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

calls, I've emphasized the positive attributes of the natural gas story, concentrating primarily on the rapidly growing demand in America. But as we all know, the gas market is international in nature, and a great deal of the growth potential for U.S. production is driven by that worldwide increase in demand. So I thought today I would spend a bit of time sharing some thoughts on what's driving that overseas growth. Chief economist of a major oil company recently estimated that global gas demand is expected to increase by 25% over the next 25 years. And I don't believe that that projection is unreasonable. And it affirms my belief that natural gas will inevitably remain a key source of energy for the long term around the globe. The factors underpinning that growth are pretty easy to understand. Demographers project continued substantial growth in worldwide population over that time period in the range of 2 billion additions by 2050. A great bulk of that increase will occur in the emerging markets of Asia and Africa, where the need for energy is particularly acute as large portions of the population move into the middle class, which drives additional energy consumption. Because there is a lack of local production and an inability to access gas by land-based delivery in most of those nations, it will be LNG which will satisfy the bulk of this additional demand, and I think it will grow faster than the overall demand for natural gas. Now, what's the impact of all this international growth on the U.S. energy segment? I believe that American exports of LNG will play a critical role in supplying this international LNG demand. The U.S. has been the top global producer of natural gas for 15 consecutive years and the world's top exporter of LNG since 2023. I believe the U.S. ...