Reuters: Shale gas lures global manufacturers to US industrial revival

When Wolfgang Eder and his team started looking around for a site for a new plant for Voestalpine, the Austrian steelmaker he heads, they had 17 sites in eight countries on their list.

This month, after more than a year of looking, they settled on the U.S. state of Texas, after a boom in the production of natural gas from shale extraction brought gas prices down to just a quarter of what companies paid in Europe.

"In the USA, re-industrialisation is being promoted very consistently, ambitiously and with great conviction," Eder told Reuters. "Low energy prices gave us the final - and not insignificant - push."

With cheap shale gas making the United States a magnet for industrial companies like Voestalpine, many economists are positing a return to industrialisation for the world's biggest economy after more than a decade of consumption-led growth.  MORE