President Joe Biden announced new liquid natural gas exports from the United States will be put on hold, citing concerns about climate change and the environment.
“My Administration is announcing today a temporary pause on pending decisions of Liquefied Natural Gas exports—with the exception of unanticipated and immediate national security emergencies,” President Biden said in a Friday morning press statement. “During this period, we will take a hard look at the impacts of LNG exports on energy costs, America’s energy security, and our environment. This pause on new LNG approvals sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time.”
While this pause on new LNG exports is in effect, the U.S. Energy Department said it will review and update the assessments used to determine “whether additional liquefied natural gas (LNG) export authorization requests to non-Free Trade Agreement countries are in the public interest.”
President Biden described the decision to halt new LNG exports in the context of his overall goal “to tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad” and rally world leaders “to transition away from the fossil fuels that jeopardize our planet and our people.”
“While MAGA Republicans willfully deny the urgency of the climate crisis, condemning the American people to a dangerous future, my administration will not be complacent,’’ President Biden said. “We will not cede to special interests. We will heed the calls of young people and frontline communities who are using their voices to demand action from those with the power to act.’’
A study published in August 2023 on climate change found problems with the United Nations’ man-made conclusion on global warming, showing that the U.N.’s climate change report ignored facts that could show natural causes.
The study by 37 researchers from 18 countries, published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Climate, found two main areas that change the final conclusion about the cause of the slight increase in global temperatures over the past 200 years.
In a nutshell, the first area was the bias introduced by the heat-island effect of urban areas, where weather stations are located and the temperatures used in the U.N. report were taken. The second area is that it is probable that the U.N.’s report underestimated the role of the sun in global warming since the 19th century.
Environmentalists Praise Move
The president’s election-year decision aligns with environmentalists who’ve raised fears LNG exports are locking in what they call catastrophic planet-warming emissions when the Democratic president has pledged to cut pollution in half by 2030. The move may help the president mend fences with the environmental groups who had decried his administration’s decision last year to allow a new oil field in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), albeit in a scaled-down version.
“This decision is brave, because [former President] Donald Trump (the man who pulled us out of the Paris climate accords on the grounds that climate change is a hoax) will attack it mercilessly,’’ environmental activist Bill McKibben wrote in an online post this week as rumors of the LNG export pause circulated.
“But it’s also very, very savvy: Biden wants young people, who care about climate above all, in his corner. They were angry about his dumb approval of the Willow oil project,’’ Mr. McKibben added.
The environmental organization the Sierra Club praised the pause and expressed hopes that the Treasury Department’s review process will halt further LNG exports in the future.
“Strong leadership, that rejects fossil fuel industry fear mongering, is our best bet to protect communities and ensure energy is affordable,” Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous said on Friday. “It’s undeniable that LNG export projects are simply not in the public interest and we are confident that if this review is done right, that would end the rubber-stamping of these projects. The Biden administration is making the right choice on behalf of the planet, our communities, and our national security.”
LNG Groups Warn of Risks for Allies
While environmental activists cheered the move, LNG industry groups condemned the pause as a “win for Russia.”
Russia has been a leading exporter of LNG and other fossil fuels prior to its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In protest of the invasion, many countries around the world shifted away from such Russian energy exports, so as to avoid bolstering Russia’s wartime economy.
U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas began less than a decade ago, but have grown rapidly in recent years and rose sharply under the expanding global boycott of Russian energy.
The American Petroleum Institute (API), the American Exploration and Production Council (AXPC), the Center for LNG, the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), and several other LNG industry groups issued a statement on Thursday urging President Biden not to implement the LNG export pause.
“Moving forward with a pause on new U.S. LNG export approvals would only bolster Russian influence and undercut President Biden’s own commitment to supply our allies with reliable energy, undermining American credibility and threatening American jobs,” the industry groups wrote.
API President and CEO Mike Sommers criticized the Biden administration upon learning that the president had moved ahead with the LNG export pause.
“There is no review needed to understand the clear benefits of U.S. LNG for stabilizing global energy markets, supporting thousands of American jobs and reducing emissions around the world by transitioning countries toward cleaner fuels,” Mr. Sommers wrote. “This is nothing more than a broken promise to U.S. allies, and it’s time for the administration to stop playing politics with global energy security.”
Efthymis Oraiopoulos and The Associated Press contributed to this article.