The U.S. exported a record-breaking 31 quadrillion BTUs of energy last year, according to the Energy Information Administration. 

Almost all those exports were various flavors of fossil fuel: Crude oil, liquified natural gas, propane, butane, ethane, and a little bit of coal. And those exports represented about 30% of total U.S. energy production — also close to a record high. 

Could it happen again in 2025?

Well, lots of domestic supply and plenty of eager global buyers made last year a good one for energy exporters, said Mark Finley, an energy economist at Rice University. He said the supply story is a simple one.

“In a nutshell, it’s shale,” he said.

Finley said shale fracking continued to yield oil and gas on the cheap. Meanwhile, Europe was looking to buy natural gas from places other than Russia, following its invasion of Ukraine.

“That's opened up new market opportunities for U.S. suppliers,” said Finley.

OPEC provided another opportunity. The cartel limited its oil production last year, said Jeff Kralowetz, vice president of business development at the research firm Argus Media.

“So you had this confluence of all these factors where the world needed U.S. energy and the U.S. had more energy to provide,” he said.

But Kralowetz said the outlook for U.S. energy exports is, “a little bit of a mixed bag.”

He said there’s still a lot of global demand for liquified natural gas. And U.S. firms are having no problem locking in long-term contracts to supply it. But oil prices have been falling this year.

“At these prices, it's hard to see Permian and other U.S. shale crude production rising very much this year,” he said.

But even with slow production growth, University of Texas at Austin professor Hugh Daigle said there should be plenty to export.

“Because demand here in the U.S. is just not rising as rapidly as we're seeing the production output rise,” he said.

And so?

“I think that we'll continue to see strong exports of American energy. Maybe not to the degree we saw last year,” Daigle said.

Another thing that could affect energy exports is what kinds of energy the U.S. consumes, said Tom Seng, a professor at Texas Christian University. President Donald Trump’s administration is blocking the permitting for new wind and solar projects.

“If we’re gonna reduce the growth of green energy, you know, the most flexible additional supply out there is natural gas,” he said.

Which means some of that gas that would have been exported might be burned here in the U.S. instead.