Texas and 15 other Republican-led states filed a lawsuit on Thursday to challenge the Biden administration’s pause on approving applications to export liquified natural gas (LNG).
“This ban disregards statutory mandates, flouts the normal regulatory process, upends the industry, disrupts Plaintiffs’ economies, and subverts our constitutional structure,” the suit reads.
“These unlawful actions leave Plaintiffs with no choice but to once more turn to the courts to enforce the law,” it added.
Joining Texas in the action were the states of Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
The states argued that the Department of Energy (DOE) concluded in July 2023 that imposing a ban on LNG exports was “unlawful” and lacked “factual or legal basis,” before eventually announcing the pause.
“Now—in the midst of an election year, and after a sustained pressure campaign from billionaire conglomerates, celebrities, ‘influencers,’ and banks—the Biden Administration acts as if its July 2023 Decision does not exist.
“The Administration likewise ignores the Natural Gas Act’s presumption in favor of exports, decades of agency policy, and State and private reliance on exports,” they stated.
The states asked the court to declare the LNG export ban unlawful and to overturn it, noting that the LNG export ban has caused “an issue of profound national importance” and “billions of dollars to the economy.”
“They also raise serious questions of national security. And this is an issue that has been the subject of proposed legislation and public attention in and outside of Congress,” the suit contends.
The states also emphasized that “no federal law grants the President, any federal officer, or any agency the authority to halt, pause, or otherwise impede the LNG export approval process under 717b(a).”
The White House in January halted approving new licenses to export LNG to countries that lack Free Trade Agreements (FTA) with the United States, which make up the majority of the United States’ LNG importers.
National Security Implications
A group of Republican senators on March 18 called for an “immediate reversal” of the freeze, warning of the decision’s “dire national security and foreign policy implications.”“At a time when war is ongoing in Ukraine and tensions are rising in the Middle East and Asia, it is particularly important that allied nations can rely on the United States for a reliable, long-term fuel supply,” the Republicans wrote.
Environmentalists and youth groups had urged the administration over the last year to slow down or stop approvals for LNG export projects, which they claim can harm local communities with pollution and will lock in global reliance on climate change-causing fossil fuels for decades.
More than 150 Republicans called on President Joe Biden to end the ban and “expeditiously approve all pending applications to increase the global supply of natural gas.”
“Your administration should do everything it can to encourage greater production of clean-burning and reliable natural gas, and to grant the export permits that allow access to global markets,” they stated in a Feb. 4 letter.
They said that the pause would weaken global energy security, noting that over 87 percent of U.S. LNG exports went to the European Union, the United Kingdom, or Asian markets in December 2023.
