In 1950, petroleum ended coal’s run as the dominant fuel in the United States. That was the last time the top spot in American energy changed hands. 75 years later, it is about to change again.
The energy data is already telling the story. In 2025, petroleum accounted for 37% of U.S. energy consumption while natural gas sat at 36%, according to EIA data cited by Bloomberg. One percentage point separates the country’s current top fuel from the one rising fast enough to overtake it.
Why natural gas is catching up to oil as America’s top fuel
The EIA projects petroleum demand will grow about 0.6% between 2025 and 2027. Over the same period, it expects natural gas demand to grow 3.4%. At that pace, the gap closes quickly.
Toby Rice, CEO of EQT Corp., the largest U.S. natural gas producer, told Bloomberg he expects the crossover to arrive before the decade is out.
“I say we probably cross that threshold within the next couple years, and by 2030, we will have a big lead on petroleum,” Rice said.
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Several factors explain the shift. The U.S. grid already generates more than 40% of its electricity by burning natural gas. From 2011 to 2020, more than 100 coal plants were converted or replaced by gas generators.
The shale revolution of the 2000s unlocked enormous reserves through fracking and horizontal drilling, making gas cheap and plentiful enough to displace coal as the primary power plant fuel. From 2015 to 2025, wind and solar tripled as a share of the energy mix while natural gas grew 23%. Wind and solar are growing too, but gas has expanded more in raw volume.
How data centers and the power grid are driving natural gas demand
AI data centers, manufacturing expansion, and electrified industrial systems are all pulling more power from the grid than most utilities planned for, and gas-fired plants are absorbing much of that load.
Goldman Sachs expects U.S. data center power demand to more than double to 66 gigawatts by 2027. Gas-fired generation is the most practical option for matching that demand growth on the timeline utilities are working with.
Gas generation can respond within minutes when demand spikes or renewable output drops. Utilities pay for that ability, and no current alternative does it as cheaply or reliably, EIA notes.
Mark Brownstein, senior vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, said the direction of travel is now hard to dispute.
“The facts don’t lie: The United States is in the midst of an energy transition, away from coal and oil, toward electricity produced by natural gas and renewables,” Brownstein said.
Gasoline demand has flattened. Electric vehicles are taking miles away from petroleum, and more efficient conventional engines are adding pressure from the other direction. Oil still runs aviation, shipping, plastics, and chemicals, but those markets are not growing fast enough to change the trajectory.
Ira Joseph, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, put it simply.
“Gas is dominant in power because it’s so inexpensive. There’s just plentiful amounts of natural gas in this country,” Joseph said.
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The LNG export boom giving natural gas a global market
The U.S. is already the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, and that position is expanding. LNG exports surged from 0.5 billion cubic feet per day in 2016 to 15 billion cubic feet per day in 2025, according to the EIA.
Export capacity is on track to nearly double by 2031. Shell estimates that feedgas for LNG export could represent 23% of total U.S. gas production by 2035.
For producers, a diversified demand base provides a cushion that domestic markets alone cannot offer. Countries in Europe and Asia that shifted away from Russian pipeline gas have been buying American LNG steadily, and that buyer base is not going anywhere.
Rice put the transition in longer historical terms.
“We’ve gone from the age of wood and horses to the age of coal to the age of petroleum, and now we are in the age of electrification. And the age of electrification is going to be driven a lot by natural gas,” he said.
What the natural gas and oil shift means for energy investors
Pipeline operators, LNG exporters, gas-fired power generators, and large producers like EQT stand to benefit if the demand trajectory holds.
The companies best positioned are those with infrastructure already in place to move gas from production regions to ports or population centers. The Department of Energy projects LNG export capacity will more than double by the early 2030s from current levels.
The President Donald Trump administration’s decision to lift a Biden-era pause on new LNG export permits in early 2025 opened the door for a wave of new terminal approvals along the Gulf Coast. Several projects that had been stuck in regulatory limbo moved to construction, adding to the capacity pipeline that EIA and independent analysts are now forecasting for the end of the decade.
Natural gas burns cleaner than coal, which makes it easier to defend in regulatory conversations. In the current policy environment, it is being treated more as a bridge than a target. Gas producers and infrastructure owners have more breathing room than oil-heavy operators dealing with EV adoption and efficiency pressure on their core markets.
Commodity markets are cyclical, and a gas price spike or a slowdown in data center buildout could change the near-term picture. But the structural forces behind gas’s rise, cheap supply, grid dependence, LNG export growth, and AI electricity demand, did not emerge overnight.
The last time America’s top energy source changed, it stayed changed for 75 years.
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