The Biden administration’s plans for increased natural gas exports
are causing a revolt within the Democratic Party.

Despite the boom in renewables reducing domestic demand for fossil
fuels, the administration is backing the gas industry’s plans to
sell fuel at higher prices abroad, believing they will lead to less
production of climate-warming chemicals like carbon dioxide by
displacing dirtier-burning coal.

The fossil fuel industry is making a broader transition to gas,
which it is seeking to pitch as a climate-friendly fuel — and the
Biden administration has so far allowed it to more than double the
number of export facilities to ship gas abroad in its pressurized
and liquified form (LNG).

Democratic senators, led by Ed Markey (Mass.), have called on the
administration to stop investing in gas plants abroad, noting that
the administration has already spent $1.8 billion on overseas fossil
fuel plants this year alone, along with voting at the World Bank to
direct $400 million in new gas financing to poorer countries.

“The United States can’t preach temperance from a bar stool, and
right now, America is drunk on oil and gas production and exports,”
Markey wrote Wednesday.

In addition, 32 Democratic members of Congress urged the
administration in November to begin planning for the end of fossil
fuels.

At the United Nations climate conference (COP28) that concluded this
week, the administration unveiled a new plan to cut leaks from
methane production, the predominant component in gas, in an effort
to reduce one of the most serious sources of harmful pollution.

But in focusing only on leaks from transporting the fuel — something
the industry already has incentives to do — the Biden administration
is “ducking the hard issue” on climate change, Rep. Sean Casten (D-
Ill.) told The Hill.

Casten was one of 60 congressional Democrats who signed on to a
November letter demanding the Department of Energy (DOE) reassess
whether the new LNG terminals were in the national interest — a
condition required for new gas exports under the 1931 Natural Gas
Act.

Democrats like Casten argue that the elephant in the room is that
much of the surge in production isn’t intended to be used by
Americans. In 2022, the U.S. exported nearly 7 trillion cubic feet
of gas — a record sum and about 20 percent of total production,
according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The
administration expects those exports to increase to about 10
trillion cubic feet by 2050, driving rising domestic production —
even as domestic consumption falls.

“Is it in the U.S. national interest for us to decarbonize our
economy and continue ramping up fossil fuel production and export
overseas?” Casten told The Hill.

“I don’t think the DOE has even tried to answer that question,” he
said, though he added that such an expansion was “clearly in the
natural gas industry’s interest.”

Like the Obama administration — under which fossil fuel exports
became legal for the first time in half a century — the Biden
administration has been broadly bullish on gas. Last year, as oil
prices soared, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called on the
nation’s oil companies to raise production.

And in April, even as the secretary emphasized the importance of
increasing renewable production fourfold, she also proclaimed
support for further gas exports.

“We want to be able to ensure that our allies can turn on the
lights,” she said. “We know that natural gas is available right now.
We have an abundance. So, we’re going to be a friend to our allies.”

In addition to national security, the Biden administration has
framed increased drilling for oil and gas and increased exports as
necessary measures to help the U.S. and allies get through the
period before renewables and electric vehicles can take over.

Defending the administration’s controversial approval of the Willow
project — a ConocoPhillips plan to produce oil for decades on
Alaska’s pristine North Slope — Granholm told Bloomberg, “We are
going through a managed transition,” and “we still have to allow
people to get from place to place affordably and turn on the
lights.”

While some research backs up the administration’s position, it is
highly controversial for both climatic and economic reasons.

First, while gas burns about twice as clean as coal, it still
releases planet-warming carbon dioxide — and it is a very potent
warming agent in its own right.

The gas that spills from the industry’s notoriously leaky supply
chain warms the planet dozens of times more than an equivalent
amount of carbon dioxide.

In addition to the problem of leaks, exporters must pressurize,
refrigerate and ship LNG across the ocean on fossil-fuel-burning
tanker ships.

Once all that is factored in, according to October research from
Cornell University, the refrigerated and pressurized form of the gas
that the Biden administration is backing may heat the climate more
than coal does.

Under the plan the Biden administration unveiled at COP28, the
administration is poised to take on the problem of leaks.

But as it continues to support growing production and exports from
the industry, it faces resistance not just from congressional
Democrats, but also from environmentalists and the residents of
impacted areas.

One particular emerging battleground is on the Louisiana Gulf Coast,
where gas exporter Venture Global LNG is waiting for federal
regulators to grant permission to expand its new Calcasieu Pass
export terminal, which would export liquified gas to Europe and East
Asia for the next 20 years.

That’s a proposal that’s controversial for many residents. The
opposition is partly due to climate concerns. But it also stems from
protracted local pollution from the facility, which, as of the
summer, has been cited more than 130 times by Louisiana state
regulators for unauthorized pollution.

When local residents compared state statistics with their own
observations of unauthorized — and unreported — flaring of chemicals
by Venture Global, which occurs when flammable chemicals are burned
off to relieve a pressure buildup, they found that the facility had
been in violation of its permit nearly two-thirds of the days it
operated, according to a coalition of local civic groups.

With most of the proposed export terminal expansion clustered on the
Gulf Coast, many residents are worried.

That protest coincided with a letter from a coalition of
environmental and civic groups urging the Biden administration “to
publicly commit during COP to no further regulatory, financial, or
diplomatic support for LNG in the United States or anywhere in the
world.”

And Calcasieu Pass is just the beginning. Seventeen export
facilities — more than double the existing number — have been
approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Seven more are
awaiting approval.

In the November national interest letter, Democratic members of
Congress argued that by considering these facilities one by one,
rather than in the aggregate — and always assuming LNG is good for
the climate — the DOE “ignores the aggregate impact that the
explosive growth in U.S. LNG exports is having on climate,
communities, and our economy.”

The lawmakers urged the department to “consider at what point
additional export licenses are no longer consistent with the public
interest.”

The fossil fuel industry has argued that it can all but eliminate
the climate impacts of gas by a huge scale-up in carbon capture
technology, which traps the planet-warming chemicals released by
burning fossil fuels.

But a report by the International Energy Agency — which considers
methane control measures essential but has called large-scale carbon
capture an “illusion” — suggests that the current level of carbon
capture investment is less than 0.1 percent of what would be needed
to address climate change meaningfully.

Even if the gas industry successfully removes all the emissions from
its whole supply chain, Casten argued, it will still leave massive
climate issues on the table.

In a world where “the U.S. looks like Norway” — with a clean grid at
home and a relatively low-leak fossil fuel sector — gas exports to
other jurisdictions would still threaten to scuttle U.S. climate
plans, Casten said.

That’s because even if the U.S. aggressively uses carbon capture on
its gas plants, it has no control over what customer countries do,
he noted.

The Democrats pushing back on the Biden administration’s plans —
many of whom, like Markey, hail from Northeastern states that still
depend on gas for heating — are largely not anti-gas hawks.

However, in addition to their climate concerns, they argued that the
export terminals jack up domestic energy prices by forcing gas-
dependent U.S. residents to compete with high overseas prices.

That conclusion comes from the U.S. Energy Information Agency, which
found that “higher LNG exports create a tighter domestic natural gas
market,” on balance “increasing domestic natural gas prices.”

Other fossil fuel companies have complained about this. On
Wednesday, oil giant BP asked U.S. regulators to investigate Venture
Global’s foreign deals — arguing that the company was ignoring its
long-term contract customers to take advantage of more lucrative
European opportunities.

Experts also argue that LNG exports — which will not begin reaching
Europe and Asia until almost 2030 and will require supply to
continue for decades — will displace cheaper renewables.

If the European Union follows its own decarbonization plans, “then
by the time these new LNG terminals and pipelines enter operation,
they would already not be needed anymore,” Simon Dekeyrel of
Brussels-based think tank European Policy Center told Energy
Monitor.

But European environmental campaigners argue that whether or not the
gas is needed, once the contracts take hold, it will have to be used
— meaning it will crowd out renewables.

That tracks with the findings of a 2021 meta-analysis that found
that while gas might help “avoid greenhouse gas emissions in the
short term, unintended long-term effects might also hinder the
transition into renewables.”

Casten said he’d be “receptive” to the argument that U.S. LNG
exports are needed to ensure European allies “still have warm homes
and operating businesses.”

“But is it in the U.S. national interest for us to sell that gas to
Europe at a premium over what we’d be willing to sell it for in the
United States?” he asked.

“Because that’s wartime profiteering.”

By failing to confront the gas industry’s production plans now, he
argued, the Biden administration risks empowering a new “behemoth”
that will use its decades of locked-in profits to lobby directly
against the kinds of fossil fuel reduction the U.S. needs to pursue.

The U.S., he noted, has not traditionally had a gas export industry
— and only in 2015 were fossil fuel exports legalized.

Is it in the national interest, he asked, to create an “industry
with a vested political interest” in ensuring those exports
continue?

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4362249-democrats-
revolt-against-biden-expanded-natural-gas-exports-plan/