With less than two months until Election Day, the Biden administration’s pause on liquefied natural gas export approvals remains deeply polarizing.
Backers hailed January’s LNG permit freeze from the Department of Energy as a step toward phasing out fossil fuels, while opponents blasted the idea as a blow to energy security around the world.
Then a court tossed out President Joe Biden’s pause. DOE said it’s “complying” with a preliminary injunction issued July 1 by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. While the department doesn’t have to issue permits to non-free trade agreement countries, it did just that over Labor Day Weekend.
Biden’s pause has been frequently interpreted as an election year maneuver to make gains with key voting blocs, but Vice President Kamala Harris is now the one set to face former President Donald Trump in November. If Trump wins and reaches the White House again, he has said he would undo any pause immediately.
The freeze was aimed at pending applications to export LNG to countries that lack a free trade agreement with the United States. DOE said it was put in place to allow the department to update climate and economic analyses used to decide whether authorizations are in the public interest.
“Former President Donald Trump has campaigned on authorizing non-FTA exports as a ‘day-one’ priority if he wins the Presidency,” the analytics firm ClearView Energy Partners said in a research note this month. “We reiterate that he might not be able to hit that target if the DOE publishes unflattering economic and environmental assessments between Election Day and Inauguration Day.”
The halt didn’t apply to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — the independent federal agency that authorizes the siting and construction of LNG import and export facilities. DOE, on the other hand, authorizes companies to export the supercooled gas.
“DOE is working expeditiously to update its economic and environmental analyses that inform its public interest decisions” on applications for projects linked to non-free trade agreement countries, the department said in a statement last month to POLITICO’s E&E News.
The White House, as well as the Harris and Trump campaigns, didn’t return a request for comment.
Here are three key questions about DOE and LNG exports:
Will DOE issue more permits under Biden?
Observers tracking the pause said it’s unlikely DOE will approve any other non-FTA export authorizations before Biden leaves office in late January.
After the Biden administration announced the pause, the Center for LNG compiled a list of a dozen pending non-FTA export authorizations at DOE. In late August, DOE issued a non-FTA authorization to New Fortress Energy’s LNG export project located off the eastern coast of Mexico. Large projects still waiting for that approval include the Calcasieu Pass 2 and Commonwealth LNG projects in Louisiana and an expansion of the Corpus Christi LNG project in Texas.
The department has said the pause will be in the “rearview mirror” by the end of March.
For gas exports to free trade agreement countries, the Natural Gas Act says those shipments “shall be deemed to be consistent with the public interest, and applications for such importation or exportation shall be granted without modification or delay.”
Completed FTA export applications “are deemed automatically in the public interest,” DOE said in a June post.
Jim Walsh, policy director at the environmental group Food & Water Watch, noted that the July 1 ruling from Judge James Cain of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana does not compel DOE to take action on approving pending LNG export applications.
Sixteen Republican attorneys general, led by Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, filed suit against DOE over the pause in late March.
In his 62-page decision, Cain said the Natural Gas Act instructs DOE to “ensure expeditious completion” of reviewing export applications. Still, DOE has wide discretion as to its pace of review.
“There’s nothing in the Natural Gas Act that sets up time lines for decision-making at DOE for how long they have to take to evaluate the public interest determination of LNG,” Walsh said.
Oren Pilant, an energy analyst with the firm East Daley Analytics, said because there’s no legal definition for “expeditious” review it is up to DOE and the administration “to decide whether or not they want to move faster with these approvals or drag their feet.”
Pilant said he doesn’t expect any more authorizations to come out before Jan. 20, 2025, the date of the next presidential inauguration.
In DOE’s recent non-FTA authorization to New Fortress Energy, DOE approved a five-year export period, rather than a requested term that ran through 2050.
Pilant said that’s an indication “that this is more an exception than a reversal of the pause,” adding that larger onshore facilities affected by the pause — such as Commonwealth LNG and Calcasieu Pass 2 — “are backed by 20-year commitments and would need the long-term export authorization in order to serve their customers.”
After DOE’s recent approval for New Fortress Energy, more than 250 environmental groups called on the department to reject pending applications to export LNG to non-FTA countries. The groups said they had initially urged DOE to pause approvals of LNG exports — and were now writing "to let you know we continue to stand behind you as we insist that you take the next step of stopping new LNG exports.”
A DOE spokesperson, who did not provide a name, declined to comment on the letter.
In a statement last month, DOE said it’s planning a 60-day public comment period on the economic and environmental analyses it’s preparing and expects it “will complete the process by the end of the first quarter of 2025.” DOE will “review and take into consideration” public comments, the department said.
“Once ready, an announcement of the updated analyses will be made available in the Federal Register and include instructions on how to submit comments,” DOE said.
When asked about the scope of its review and how many national labs will be involved in preparing climate and economic analyses, DOE referred E&E News to a department fact sheet, as well as past Capitol Hill appearances by department officials.
Charlie Riedl, executive director of the Center for LNG, said in a statement that “the uncertainty of the pause makes it difficult for anyone to speculate” on authorizations.
This month, Riedl said his group is hopeful that more authorizations from DOE will come.
How will LNG play at the ballot box?
LNG isn’t likely to rank high on the priority list for a large swath of the electorate in the presidential race, observers said.
But it could matter more in communities that are home to LNG infrastructure or have other strong energy ties, including the presidential swing state of Pennsylvania.
On the campaign trail, Trump has pledged to end Harris’ “war” on American energy, repeating his mantra of “drill, baby, drill.”
At a rally last month in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump claimed Harris would mean “death for Pennsylvania energy.” He falsely said that “Kamala exposed a natural gas export ban to cripple Pennsylvania energy producers.”
The GOP has deployed talking points that reflect a “narrative that somehow the Biden administration is anti-energy,” said Benjamin Schmitt, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and its Kleinman Center for Energy Policy.
That isn’t true because “we’re at maximum, historic levels of oil and gas production,” he said.
Chris Treanor, executive director of the Partnership to Address Global Emissions (PAGE), said he doesn’t expect the LNG pause or climate change to be on the top of voters’ lists, even in a state like Pennsylvania.
“But when you’re anticipating an election as close as the one we’re going to have, and especially as close as it’s anticipated to be in Pennsylvania, you’re not really looking at what the average voter is thinking,” Treanor said in an interview.
“You’re thinking about what the swing voter is thinking, and I think there are a lot more swing voters in western Pennsylvania working in union jobs, or non-union jobs, tied to the energy industry than maybe there are in the Philadelphia suburbs,” he added.
In early February, Pennsylvania Democratic Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman released a joint statement shortly after the Biden administration unveiled the pause.
The senators said they had “concerns about the long-term impacts that this pause will have on the thousands of jobs in Pennsylvania’s natural gas industry,” adding, “If this decision puts Pennsylvania energy jobs at risk, we will push the Biden Administration to reverse this decision.”
Schmitt at the University of Pennsylvania said their statement speaks to swing-state concerns.
“There’s a certain concern in parts of the country that are reliant on energy exports and the energy industry that [the pause] would have a negative impact on jobs,” Schmitt said.
But the freeze isn’t likely to be among the top issues for voters, he said.
“I think the people that you would have vote on that front are ... a much smaller part of the electorate that is either in and around communities that have LNG facilities, or proposed LNG facilities, and/or are working for those facilities themselves,” Schmitt said.
Dave McCormick, the Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania who is trying to unseat Casey, asserted that the sitting senator and Harris have “opposed Pennsylvania energy every step of the way.”
“We can build up a much larger capacity to sell Pennsylvania natural gas to the world in the form of LNG or we can watch as those jobs and dollars go to other energy-producing nations that are hostile to us, like Russia and China and Qatar," McCormick said in a statement.
Casey’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.
If elected this fall, Trump would push to expand U.S. LNG exports, said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, vice president of energy and innovation at the University of Houston, and would “build foreign policy around exported natural gas and we would see expansion of the LNG export market.”
Under a potential Harris administration, LNG would still be a “tool in the toolkit,” but would come with increased scrutiny of the industry’s emissions footprint, Krishnamoorti said.
How could the freeze reshape U.S. LNG?
Some observers say the DOE approval process could look different once the department's assessments are done and more non-free trade agreement LNG export permits are going out the door.
But what hasn’t changed is that U.S. exports are projected to climb by nearly 17 percent from 2024 to 2025. Global gas demand is expected to rise by 2.3 percent this year, the International Energy Agency said in its latest gas market report.
Paul Bledsoe, a lecturer at American University’s Center for Environmental Policy, said he anticipates that DOE under Harris would put forward new criteria for LNG licensing and that most exporters will be able to meet that.
“I believe that new licenses will be granted and the reason is because I think that industry is going to be able to show that U.S. gas has lower methane emissions than Russian and other sources of gas,” Bledsoe said.
Bledsoe said he doesn’t understand why DOE would go through the work of putting out the analyses if they weren’t going to establish new public interest criteria. That is likely to include international energy security considerations, the greenhouse gas footprint of exports and the effect of exports on domestic prices.
“It strikes me as likely that there would be new criteria established for the licensing and that most companies would be able to meet the new criteria,” he said.
Still, Jeremy Symons, principal at the consulting firm Symons Public Affairs, said the Biden administration’s decision to implement the pause and its review of gas exports “was a really smart political decision, as well as a policy decision.
“These gas exports not only have significant environmental consequences, but they also drive up energy prices for American consumers, including families, businesses and farmers,” he said in an interview.
Symons said DOE should not issue any further approvals for LNG exports.
Paul Cicio, president of the Industrial Energy Consumers of America, said he believes DOE’s analyses are going to show that further approvals of LNG export applications to non-FTA countries aren’t in the public interest.
Cicio said his group, which promotes the interests of manufacturing companies, thinks the analyses will show that increased exports “elevate the risk” of substantial impacts to U.S. natural gas and electricity prices when inventories are low.
“The risks are high when we have low inventory, which is not the case today, but we saw that in the winter of 2021-2022,” he said in an interview.
U.S. natural gas inventories started the 2022 injection season “at the lowest level in three years because of high heating demand in January and record LNG exports,” according to an October 2022 report from the DOE’s statistical arm. Stockpiling of gas typically occurs from April to October when consumption is relatively low, the department said.
Meanwhile, Riedl at the Center for LNG said the uncertainty created by the pause “extends to what the LNG export approval process looks like after the pause.”
“DOE has created a situation where project developers don’t have a clear view of what the future looks like, something essential to developing a multibillion dollar infrastructure project,” he said.
Boosters of LNG argue that DOE’s analyses will demonstrate the benefits of gas exports, while critics of the industry claim the opposite.
If DOE and the national labs follow the science, “the only conclusion you can reach is that this industry should be snuffed out now,” said Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a grassroots organization that tracks the effects of energy projects.
Rolfes said DOE won't have undertaken a sincere review if it starts issuing permits shortly after its analyses are finished.
Treanor at the PAGE coalition, a group launched in 2022 that advocates for greater LNG exports, said if Harris is elected president and stopped issuing LNG export authorizations, that would be “hugely controversial” on an international level.
He called that an improbable possibility.
Jennings at API, meanwhile, said, “We hope the study confirms what we have known for a long time — that U.S. LNG is a net benefit to America and to our allies.”
