Over the years, America’s involvement in the strife-ridden politics of the Middle East has brought a lot of heartache. By one measure, however, Americans’ luck in the Middle East has improved. It’s not that political divisions have mended. It’s that U.S. natural gas producers have found a way to capitalize on those divisions. Yes, American shale gas is now so plentiful we have started exporting it to countries accustomed to being on the other side of our energy dependence equation. The reverse U.S.-Mideast energy trade I mentioned in an earlier blog post has deepened. China, too, is now cashing in, selling the region on coal. At the root of these strange trade juxtapositions lies fractious regional politics. Figure 1: In 2016 and 2017, more than 10 percent of US LNG exports, or 27 cargoes, went to these three monarchies in the Middle East. Egypt also took three US cargoes. […]