Across four decades of Democratic and Republican administrations, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) has determined that exporting domestically produced liquified natural gas (LNG) serves the “public interest” by generating jobs and positive national economic benefits, strengthening national energy security, and reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.
House Republicans steadfastly maintain the LNG regulatory lockdown damages the “public interest” by jeopardizing jobs, creating planning and investing uncertainty, stunting industry-paid taxes that fund local governments and school districts while inadvertently increasing carbon emissions the administration seeks to reduce and endangering national security.
In 2023, the House passed HR 1, which, among a raft of other provisions, would prohibit a president from issuing an LNG permit freeze. The bill has not been heard in the Democrat-led Senate, nor is HR 7176—a 2024 measure that essentially does the same thing 2022’s HR 1 did—likely to advance.
Sixteen Republican-led energy-producing states are challenging the Biden LNG export permit pause in federal court, alleging that it violates the Natural Gas Act and is counter to longstanding DOE policy and precedent regarding LNG exports as serving the “public interest.”
The Biden administration and many congressional Democrats maintain the pause is warranted to update permitting requirements that were drafted before the LNG export boom, and that placing a greater emphasis on health impacts on local people and environmental concerns of local communities is simply the right thing to do.
Biden ‘Ignored Both Reality and Science’
The Port Arthur hearing was the second ordered by House Energy & Commerce Committee Chair Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) since the administration imposed the pause in January. The first hearing staged on Feb. 6 in Washington, was also before the Energy, Climate & Grid Security Subcommittee chaired by Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.).“The Biden administration’s decision to ban the review and issuance of additional LNG export licenses has harmed the U.S. economy, jobs, and the nation’s energy security, both directly and indirectly,” Mr. Duncan said, citing the “public interest” in resuming LNG exports.
According to studies by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute, LNG exports could add up to $73 billion in U.S. economic activities and 450,000 American jobs by 2040, he said.
Mr. Duncan said the “politically driven decision” is “reflective of an administration that continues to put the priorities of the environmentalists over the interest of the American people. President Biden has ignored both reality and science to heed the calls of his radical environmental base.”
Since the pause has “no endpoint or timeline” and was “announced in a press conference and press release,” he and others argued it is a de facto ban since it engenders uncertainty, an unease evident in Port Arthur, a petrochemical hub where 24 job-generating energy infrastructure projects, including a $13 billion Port Arthur LNG expansion, are now in limbo.
“The ‘Rush-to-Green’ concept as it is being applied to [LNG suppliers] will have a negative impact on the economic growth and stability of Port Arthur, Texas,” Mr. Bertie confirmed.
Up to 11,500 construction jobs could be at risk if the pause isn’t ended soon, he said.
“The jobs Port Arthurans have during this construction phase will be compromised negatively if the permitting is continued to be disallowed,” Mr. Bertie said. “The economic impact to businesses supplying materials and goods during this operation will harm families’ abilities to continue with specific qualities of life. The negative impact will then spread to the region and ill-affect thousands of workers and their families.”
But it’s not just about Port Arthur jobs and Texas’s petrochemical industry, he said, explaining there’s a bigger “public interest” at stake in “having a robust export trade that supports domestic energy independence along with jobs and economic vitality.”
‘Gift to Vladimir Putin’
“In addition to harming our domestic energy industry, President Biden’s LNG export ban is a gift to Vladimir Putin,” Mr. Duncan said. “Global demand for gas is expected to increase 46 percent by 2050 and our European and Asian allies, who want to do business with the United States, will look to Qatar, Russia, Iran, and other adversaries of the United States to meet their growing energy needs.”The fact that U.S.-produced LNG is cleaner than gas, oil, and coal produced elsewhere, increasing exports actually helps the administration achieve its carbon neutral 2035 and 2050 goals, he said.
“Many House Democrats claim to support Ukraine, yet they promote an LNG export ban which bolsters Putin’s stranglehold over Ukraine. Republicans in the House of Representatives recognize the urgency of reversing this,” Mr. Duncan said.
Pause Is Prudent, Needed
Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas) dismissed much of the criticism as rhetoric, noting the pause is “not an export ban. LNG exports continue and will continue each day” and, in fact, “under the Biden administration, the United States is producing more crude oil than any other country at any point in history.”Also, she said, Republicans are well aware that U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in Houston last month that “by this time next year, [the pause] should be in the rearview mirror,” yet continue to aggravate “concerns about an indefinite pause” when they know otherwise.
“That said,” Ms. Fletcher continued, “I know the pause has caused concern and uncertainty for people, for projects, for communities, and for companies. So our hearing today is an important opportunity for us to participate in the process and in fact-gathering. I’m sure there will be many areas of agreement and beneficial ideas for action.”
Multiple administrations in both parties “have found that exporting LNG is in the public interest. Cleaner American natural gas is more competitive on the world market and it is an important tool in addressing climate change” she said. “But that does not mean that our work to reduce emissions and safeguard communities is complete.”
The temporary pause was called to allow the DOE to update its “public interest determination process,” she said. That must be adjusted to reflect that “in just eight years, the United States has become the world’s top exporter of natural gas,” she added.
DOE’s “determination of ‘public interest’ until today has evaluated environmental impacts and cost impacts for consumers,” Ms. Fletcher said. “Is it not unreasonable for the DOE to take an objective look at export applications with the most comprehensive up-to-date analysis of the economic, environmental, and national security considerations of ‘public interest?’ It is not the same thing as a ban on exports.”
The DOE review will now “address the three Cs—climate, cost, communities—with a particular emphasis on communities here today,” she said. “This pause gives us an important opportunity to think about community engagement and that’s something where, I think, there really have been demonstrated opportunities for improvement.”
Whose ‘Public Interest?’
Port Arthur Community Action Network Founder and CEO John Beard Jr., a former Port Arthur city commissioner and refinery worker, suggested plenty of ways the DOE review can better include residents, testifying that Port Arthur has historically been “a sacrifice zone” where the oil/gas industry has despoiled the environment without generating the jobs proponents tout.There’s ample data to support longstanding concerns about the environmental and health impacts that the petrochemical industry imposes on the region, meaning any expansion should engender expansive scrutiny, he said.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the 28 largest emitters in Jefferson County emitted more than 27 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2022, Mr. Beard said.
Much of the Port Arthur area is in the 90th percentile or above for incidences of heart disease and the 90th percentile for asthma, he said. “Furthermore,” he added, “cancer rates among African Americans living in Jefferson County are 16 percent higher than that of the average Texan.”
Only 5 percent of U.S. cities “have worse air than we do,” Mr. Beard said. “And that air has some of the largest emitters of benzene and other toxins in virtually any place in the country. That’s the price we pay. So when you go to these communities, you have to understand and know what they’ve been suffering for decades. But yet America still depends on them.”
Mr. Bartie said funding for environmental protections enacted under 2021’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act are tied into energy development projects. He called for a compromise in finding a middle ground between “environmental wellness and economic stability and growth.”
That compromise is not possible if permit reviews are suspended, he said. “I, in no way am here to bash or discredit the Biden-Harris administration on its position on the matter of permitting, however, I do appeal to the administration to reconsider, and subsequently abandon, its present course of discontinuance or disallowing the permitting process to go forward.”
It is a no-brainer local and national imperative to lift the pause and adopt legislation that prohibits a president from tweaking an already laborious permitting process to appease “radical environmentalists,” Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) said.
“It is a reality that American LNG leads to American energy dominance, American jobs, and American leadership overseas, especially at a time when the world seems to be on fire and enemies are moving around everywhere,” he said.
Not all enemies are overseas, Mr. Beard said, and some are in the air that Port Arthurans breathe.
“You talk about the ‘national interest’” but it’s just talk, he said because the only interests being represented are those of the oil and gas industry.
Texans are good at talking and doing nothing when that’s the aim, the lifelong Texan said.
“Texas likes to talk about—as you know, Congressman Weber—seceding from the union. We haven’t done that yet but we are part of that union, and we are part of Texas,” Mr. Beard said. “And those things [environmental, health effects] have to be considered, those impacts, the community impacts, as well as the lack of jobs.”
