Biden LNG Ban Would Have Been Permanent If Kamala Harris Had Been Elected, According To Doug Sheridan

A chilling thought.

Venture Global LNG export facility in Calcasieu, Louisiana

Doug Sheridan is a very sharp and succinct energy analyst and writer who publishes his thoughts on LinkedIn. His company, EnergyPoint Research, is based in Houston, Texas. Doug currently has 13,724 followers on LinkedIn. I highly recommend following him.

This morning's LinkedIn post focuses on the Biden Administration's “pause” in DOE approvals of new export facilities. His conclusion is chilling:

Bottom Line: Had Kamala Harris won, her admin would undoubtedly have used the new study to justify a permanent export ban and we would never have found out about the other study.

His 391-word post follows:

The WSJ Editorial Board writes, the Energy Dep’t this week approved the Venture Global LNG CP2 LNG export project that became a cause for climate activists. Good call. Meantime, we are learning more about how the Biden team deceived Americans about its 2024 LNG export “pause.”

Biden, prodded by climate adviser John Podesta, announced a supposedly temporary suspension of LNG project approvals in Jan of the election year. The stated purpose was so the DOE could do a study to determine if increased exports are in the “public interest.” It turns out that DOE career staff had already completed such a study just months earlier.

A draft of that study shows that increased US LNG exports would have negligible effects on domestic prices while modestly reducing GHG emissions. The latter is largely because US LNG exports would displace coal in power production and gas exports from other countries such as Russia.

The study projected that, even assuming countries meet their net-zero pledges, global natural gas consumption would grow through 2050. This is notable because the climate lobby claims building more LNG projects would result in “stranded assets” as countries wean themselves off fossil fuels.

The climate lobby also says more LNG exports will increase US energy costs. But the study forecast that wholesale gas prices in the US would rise less than in the “study DOE commissioned on the economic impacts from US LNG exports in 2018.” Residential gas prices would increase by a mere 4% by 2050.

DOE staff and lawyers rigorously reviewed the models and findings because these conclusions “are going to receive a lot of scrutiny” and we “need to be able to explain why the model shows reduced emissions,” as one commented in the study’s margins. Another recommended “full tabulated results in an Excel workbook be made available to provide transparency to the public.”

That isn’t what the Biden crowd wanted to hear. They shelved the staff study and imposed their “pause” to motivate progressives during last year’s election. In Dec, Biden DOE Secretary Granholm released a different study, which purported to show that “unfettered” LNG exports would increase global emissions and domestic gas prices.

Bottom Line: Had Kamala Harris won, her admin would undoubtedly have used the new study to justify a permanent export ban and we would never have found out about the other study.

My Take: In my Substack post two days ago, on March 19, titled “Energy Secretary Chris Wright Announces Approval of the Cameron Parish LNG Expansion Project,” I included a few quotes from Energy Secretary Chris Wright about the Biden Administration’s pause on LNG export facilities. One quote said:

I was extremely disappointed to see what was done. In fact, last night I was reading the original report on LNG prepared by the Department of Energy in 2023 that clearly showed it was in America’s interest to grow our LNG exports and it wouldn’t impact domestic prices and in fact it would lower greenhouse emissions.

Doug Sheridan’s conclusion that the purely political LNG export ban would have become permanent had the presidential election gone the other way is a frightening thought.

I will reiterate my concluding thought in my May 19 post: “For me, the Biden ban on new LNG facilities was one of the most infuriating moves coming out of the Biden Administration, and that is saying a lot.”

The good news is that the US LNG industry is booming, and the U.S. has solidified its position as the world’s largest LNG exporter of this life-saving commodity.

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