OPINION:
Saying the Biden administration’s “pause” in approving new liquefied natural gas export terminals “is completely without reason or logic and is perhaps the epiphany of ideocracy,” U.S. District Judge James D. Cain on July 2 ordered the policy to be “stayed in its entirety, effective immediately.”
Attorneys general from 16 red states had petitioned the Louisiana-based court to lift the moratorium on approvals of new LNG export projects, arguing the White House had illegally skirted regulatory procedures.
Specifically, they said allowing the Department of Energy to conduct studies on the climate, economic and national security impacts of approving more LNG export terminals conflicted with the Natural Gas Act’s provision that the department must ensure “expeditious completion” of such reviews in determining whether the projects “are in the public interest.”
Judge Cain, who was appointed by then-President Donald Trump, also said the Energy Department violated the Administrative Procedures Act by failing to provide notice and a public comment period. It remains to be seen how “expeditiously” Energy Department officials, especially political appointees of President Biden, will go about lifting the moratorium and reviewing permits for LNG export terminals.
American LNG exports have doubled in the last four years, reaching markets in Europe, Asia and Latin America. According to the Energy Department, seven such terminals are operating in the U.S. — two in Texas, two in Louisiana and one each in Georgia, Maryland and Alaska. Two more are under construction — one each in Texas and Louisiana. Thirteen more have been approved but are not yet under construction — five each in Texas and Louisiana and one each in Mississippi, Florida and Alaska. And six more — five in Louisiana and one in Texas — await approval by the Energy Department.
In addition to U.S. environmental groups that see a vigorous American LNG export industry as undermining their goal of crippling the fossil-fuel industry, the chief beneficiary of the moratorium was Russian President Vladimir Putin. After Mr. Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, European countries were eager to wean themselves from dependency on Russian natural gas, knowing full well that buying Mr. Putin’s gas helped fuel his war machine.
Importing LNG from the U.S. was seen as an attractive alternative.
European countries — notably Britain and Germany — had sunk untold billions of euros into wind and solar projects, resulting in soaring prices for electricity for both residential and commercial customers. U.S. LNG could provide Europe with the baseline power that weather-dependent wind turbines and solar panels cannot. While contracts between European buyers and American LNG suppliers are not affected by the moratorium, European governments were taken aback by the prospect of uncertain American deliveries of natural gas in the future. For Mr. Putin, by contrast, Mr. Biden’s kneecapping of the U.S. natural gas industry could not have come at a better time.
From a geopolitical perspective, Mr. Biden’s LNG moratorium fits nicely into the White House’s fondness for wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicle batteries, the raw materials for which are largely found in Chinese supply chains. Mr. Biden’s vaunted energy transition involves transferring wealth and power from the U.S. to America’s most potent global rivals.
Judge Cain’s ruling on LNG export terminals marks another setback for the White House’s climate agenda, aimed at a forced transition to green energy, regardless of the consequences for U.S. consumers and America’s position in the world. It came four days after the Supreme Court, in a landmark opinion, overturned a 40-year-old legal precedent known as Chevron deference, which required judges to defer to federal agencies’ interpretation of ambiguously written laws.
In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the high court stripped bureaucrats of that power and returned it to judges in accordance with the Constitution’s separation of powers. Both the Obama and Biden administrations had used Chevron deference to have the entrenched bureaucracy issue rules pushing their climate agenda, along with other policies, including health care and student loan forgiveness.
Just as Judge Cain’s federal court in Louisiana has undercut a White House policy that strengthened Russia at the expense of the U.S. and its allies, the Supreme Court has curtailed the regulatory state’s power to impose policies, such as de facto EV mandates, that ultimately benefit China’s quest for global dominance.
What started as domestic courtroom disputes over the constitutionality of regulatory initiatives has spilled over into the most perilous international situation since the late 1930s.
• Bonner Russell Cohen is a senior policy analyst with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.
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