Last month, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced a pause on the approval of new Liquefied Natural Gas exports to allow the department to update its permit authorization guidelines and principles of analysis. Subsequently, a group of Republican Attorney Generals (AGs) wrote a letter to President Biden and Energy Secretary Elizabeth Granholm protesting the LNG pause. The letter is deeply problematic, from its framing of the issue, to the legal principles it seeks to invoke, to its unwillingness to engage in good faith with the Biden Administration’s authority writ large.
While the AGs seek to argue that Biden’s pause is unlawful, and claim that the “pause” – intended to allow for the update of guidelines that haven’t been re-considered since 2018-19 – are not a pause at all, but instead an “unconstitutional” blanket denial. The claim is facially ridiculous, given that guidance updates (and those specifically regarding LNG permit approvals) are well within standard agency and executive authorities.
It is made doubly frustrating, however, by virtue of the fact that the pause on new approvals is definitionally just a pause and still allows currently approved gas exports and construction projects to continue. There is also considerable precedent for the DOE to update its analysis around LNG, as it did in 2018 and again in 2019, for example. The DOE has full responsibility and authority, as prescribed by Congress, to evaluate the impact of export approvals, and to interrogate if they are genuinely facilitating the public interest. At minimum, acting in the public interest seems like it should automatically include acting on catastrophic climate change, given that research indicates that ending fossil fuel reliance is one of the most important steps in fighting climate change.
In fact, some claim that this pause doesn’t even do enough to reckon with the harms of already present LNG export terminals. In truth, as DOE Secretary Granholm put it, the state AGs (and others) are arguing that exports should continue unabated without update or review are actually intimating that the agency should be “willfully blind to the realities around us.”
Those realities are that LNG, and in particular, methane, is more potent as a greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide, and LNG carries risk for the release of methane emissions not just during the production stage, but also during the storage and transportation stages. The recent science around the harms of methane and associated emissions reductions models has become more worrisome over the past several years, which makes a review especially warranted and necessary. Of course, there’s also the constant potential of still new emissions from potential methane leaks throughout the process. These leaks also cause poor air quality for communities residing around LNG terminals, increase the likelihood of explosions, and expose humans and animals to harmful pollutants and irritants.
The letter goes on to claim that “the ‘pause’ further damages our economy,” by harming an industry on which Americans are reliant for both natural gas and millions of jobs. This framing is deliberately manipulative given that Americans by definition do not use exported LNG resources and LNG exports are projected to not only continue, but grow (a reality which has already been heavily criticized by environmentalists).
The AG’s also claim that the pause harms national security by delivering a win to the next largest producers of LNG, including Russia, Iran and China. This is, once again, an overt argumentative fallacy. Though AGs attempt to manufacture a faux-hysteria by articulating devastating and radiating consequences for allies as a result of the pause, there remains no short- or medium-term threat to energy supply in Europe. In fact, most of the LNG consumed from the US is not even by European or Asian consumers, but rather by oil and gas traders seeking to re-sell LNG for their own profit. This renders the AGs claims about energy security entirely baseless.
The letter does nothing but seek to paint Biden as making a baseless choice, and spreading deeply harmful and false narratives around LNG exports, acting as though this pause is an unjustifiable and preposterous choice. But LNG has significant impacts to both the environment, as well as to human health, and steps to reevaluate and analyze the impact of LNG are crucial actions by the federal government to mitigate potential environmental and health harms of these exports. The DOE’s choice to review the climate and economic impacts on LNG exports is a significant step forward in ensuring the department’s actions are in line with the public wellbeing and interest – which should be celebrated by leaders nationwide, rather than being chastised.