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Despite repeated promises from President Donald Trump on the campaign trail to lower the cost of energy, consumers in the United States collectively paid $12 billion more for natural gas to power their homes over the first nine months of 2025 — about $124 more per family — than they did a year earlier, according to a new report on federal data by the watchdog group Public Citizen.

Thanks to a fracking boom that has polluted communities from Pennsylvania to Texas, the U.S. is the world’s top producer and exporter of “natural” methane gas. But the price of refined natural gas sold to residential customers is rising to record levels under Trump. Almost immediately after taking office, Trump embraced the rapidly expanding natural fossil gas export industry and ordered the Department of Energy to expedite permits for shipping fracked gas overseas.

“Over and over in his stump speeches Donald Trump specifically promised all Americans energy and utility bills would be slashed in half,” Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s energy program and author of the report, told reporters on December 16. “Not only are prices not declining, they are increasing, and we Americans are experiencing an energy affordability crisis driven by high natural gas prices.”

The natural gas export industry already consumes more gas than the 73 million U.S. households that use natural gas.

Rising gas exports are linked to the increase in natural gas prices, primarily from eight liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals where fracked gas is processed into liquid and loaded onto barges for transport. The natural gas export industry already consumes more gas than the 73 million U.S. households that use natural gas, according to

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