The Biden administration issued its long-awaited assessment on liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports on Tuesday, with its findings potentially complicating President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to unleash America’s energy industry. [emphasis, links added]
The Department of Energy (DOE) published the study nearly a year after the administration announced in January it would pause approvals for new export capacity to non-free trade agreement countries to conduct a fresh assessment of whether additional exports are in the public interest.
While the report stopped short of calling for a complete ban on new export approvals, it suggests that increasing exports will drive up domestic prices, jack up emissions, and possibly help China, conclusions that could potentially open up projects approved by the incoming Trump team to legal vulnerability, according to Bloomberg News.
“The main takeaway is that a business-as-usual approach is neither sustainable nor advisable,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters on Tuesday. “American consumers and communities and our climate would pay the price.”
Trump has pledged to end the freeze on export approvals immediately upon assuming office in January 2025 as part of a wider “energy dominance” agenda, a plan to unshackle U.S. energy producers to drive down domestic prices and reinforce American economic might on the global stage.
It could take the Trump administration up to a year to issue its analysis, and Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that “findings showing additional exports cause more harm than good could make new approvals issued by Trump’s administration vulnerable to legal challenges.”
Republican Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers slammed the study as a “clear attempt to cement Joe Biden’s rush-to-green agenda” in a Tuesday statement and asserted that the entire LNG pause was a political choice meant to appease hardline environmentalist interests.
Notably, S&P Global released its analysis of the LNG market on Tuesday and found that increasing U.S. LNG exports are unlikely to have any “major impact” on domestic natural gas prices, contradicting a key assertion of the DOE’s brand new study.
Members of the Biden administration were reportedly influenced by a Cornell University professor’s questionable 2023 study claiming that natural gas exports are worse for the environment than domestically mined coal, and officials also reportedly met with a 25-year-old TikTok influencer leading an online campaign against LNG exports before announcing the pause in January 2024.
“It’s time to lift the pause on new LNG export permits and restore American energy leadership around the world,” Mike Sommers, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, said of the new DOE report.
“After nearly a year of a politically motivated pause that has only weakened global energy security, it’s never been clearer that U.S. LNG is critical for meeting the growing demand for affordable, reliable energy while supporting our allies overseas.”
Anne Bradbury, CEO of the American Exploration and Production Council, also addressed the DOE’s report in a statement, advising the public to be skeptical of the Biden administration’s efforts to play politics with natural gas exports.
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