Tag Archive for: liquefied natural gas

White House Shoots Down Mike Johnson’s Plan To Link Ukraine Aid And Liquefied Natural Gas Reversal

/in , , , , , , , , /by

The White House said Tuesday that it would not entertain a compromise with Speaker Mike Johnson to connect an aid package for Ukraine with a reversal of the Biden administration’s moratorium on approvals for new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, according to Bloomberg News.

Johnson reportedly suggested that such a compromise could be a workable solution for both parties to take care of high-priority items on their respective agendas, but the White House has made clear that the deal is dead on arrival, according to Bloomberg News. The right flank of the House Republican conference has opposed a new major aid package for Ukraine, while the White House is doubling down on its LNG exports pause after environmentalist groups showered the Biden administration with praise for its Jan. 26 decision on the issue.

“The president has been clear that House Republicans should pass the bipartisan national security agreement that already passed the Senate as soon as possible to get Ukraine the aid it urgently needs to defend itself from Russian tyranny,” the White House said in a statement, according to Bloomberg News. “The president supports the pause on pending, additional approvals of LNG export licenses to evaluate the economic and climate impacts on consumers and communities.”

The Senate passed a $95 billion aid package for aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan in February, but the House has yet to approve the bill and send it to President Joe Biden’s desk. The president has called on House Republicans to pass the foreign aid bill on numerous occasions, including during his State of the Union Address in March.

During a Sunday appearance on Fox News, Johnson intimated that he was thinking about linking the two issues together in a single piece of legislation when the House returns to Washington after its spring recess.

Johnson reportedly floated the idea to connect Ukraine aid and a LNG pause reversal to Biden during a one-on-one meeting in March, according to Bloomberg News, which cited an individual with knowledge of the situation. Reuters previously reported that some in the White House were potentially willing to reverse the moratorium depending on what else was included in the compromise, but White House officials disputed that claim.

Climate activists — including the confrontational outfit called Climate Defiance and a 25-year old TikTok influencer — lobbied the Biden administration to impose the LNG moratorium ahead of the decision to do so. The pause will not reduce global emissions, but instead empower natural gas production in places like Russia and Qatar, energy sector experts previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The climate lobby and its activist voters are poised to be a key bastion of support for Biden in the 2024 race, with several organizations already endorsing his reelection campaign or declaring their plans to spend big to stave off former President Donald Trump’s potential return to the White House.

The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Entire Push To Halt New Natural Gas Exports Traces Back To One Ivy League Prof And His Shaky Study

Biden Admin Leaned On Questionable And Misleading Science To Justify Halting Natural Gas Hub Approvals

Trump-Appointed Federal Judge Smacks Down ‘Arbitrary And Capricious’ Biden EV Scheme

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

DAVID BLACKMON: The Biden Admin And Its Buddies Are Waging Foolish War Against Abundant Clean Energy

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

On Thursday, the Biden administration announced it was invoking a hold on permitting processes for proposed new export projects for liquefied natural gas (LNG). It was a nakedly partisan act designed to appease the Democrat party’s climate alarmist funder base, one that will create ripple effects across the global economy and energy space. It will also create uncertainty and alarm among consumers of US LNG, especially among European nations who are supposedly America’s allies.

Reacting to the policy decision, Tom Pyle, President of the DC-based Institute for Energy Research, told me that, “With this decision, President Biden is continuing to place his environmental donors over the American people.  A delay of a decision on [permitting] until after the November 5, 2024, U.S. presidential election could spare President Biden from criticism from environmentalists, but it will likely cause havoc to markets and the energy security of our allies who may question the reliability of the United States as a secure energy supplier.”

Fortunately for the United States and its LNG customers, an array of new export facilities already in the construction phase of development will add up to 12 billion cubic feet per day of new export capacity over the coming three years. These projects would be unmolested by this latest authoritarian move by the White House, absent efforts to expand it.

One of the biggest of these is the Rio Grande LNG project being constructed outside Brownsville, Texas near the mouth of the Rio Grande River. Operated by developer NextDecade, Rio Grande LNG will have the capacity to export 11.74 million tonnes of LNG per year once its three trains go into service in the coming years. That equates to enough energy to heat and cool 34 million households, more energy than all the Biden administration’s planned offshore wind projects combined.

Even better, Rio Grande LNG is being designed to produce LNG that will rank among the lowest carbon-intensive production in the world. That’s because NextDecade is simultaneously building out a massive carbon capture and storage project in conjunction with the export facility.

But, even though Rio Grande LNG and other planned facilities under construction appear to be untouched by the Biden delay, no one should think they are moving ahead unopposed. A pair of activist groups, the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) and the Oregon Investment Council (OIC), groups with no real connection to the community, have worked to drum up opposition to the project that is providing hundreds of jobs and ultimately billions of dollars in economic impact for the local area. Ironically, this PESP group is working in opposition to the development despite major investments being made into it by ESG-focused investor groups, potentially including Larry Fink’s BlackRock if a planned acquisition is completed.

Part of the opposition’s advocacy claims to be protecting the interests of the Carrizo Comecrudo Nation with a somewhat specious claim that the project is being sited on sacred lands. But this Carrizo nation is not a federally recognized tribe, likely because a review of its history indicates it is in fact native to Mexico rather than Texas. The claim of sacred lands appears to hold no merit and be purely motivated by politics, no different than the White House delay on permitting announced Thursday.

An email missive from PESP that landed in my email inbox this week also claims that “… the facilities would significantly degrade local fishing, shrimping and natural tourism industries putting communities’ livelihoods at risk.” But the only evidence offered in support of these claims is a “study” authored by a group of leftwing climate alarm groups like the Rainforest Action Network and the Sierra Club. If the claims had been truly quantified by any credible source, the Biden administration would have no doubt been eager to act on them to advance its Green New Deal-based agenda.

The world needs America’s LNG, and is likely to need more and more of it as time goes on. The White House’s action to delay the already-ridiculously slow permitting process in such an obvious political move is as reprehensible as it is, frankly, stupid.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

AUTHOR

DAVID BLACKMON

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

RELATED ARTICLES:

EV Owners Reveal Why They Returned to Gas-Powered Cars

Greens Claim Their Policies Will Benefit Minorities And The Working Class, But Experts Say They’re Dead Wrong

White House Touts Support Of Confrontational Enviro Group That Harassed Admin Officials, Dems

DAVID BLACKMON: The Legacy Media Is Still Totally Wrong About The Texas Power Grid

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

‘Will Not Fix The Problem’: Biden Releasing Oil Reserves Due To Politics, Critics Say

/in , , , , , , /by

  • President Joe Biden’s decision to tap the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) was derided by top GOP lawmakers and experts who said the move was political and won’t move the needle on gasoline prices.
  • “Even if the economic reality of five or maybe 10 cents a gallon of short term impact isn’t that big of a deal, doing nothing might look like a really big political problem,” Kevin Book, a National Petroleum Council member and managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
  • The federal government will release 32 million barrels of oil from the SPR and accelerate the release of 18 million barrels that had already been congressionally mandated, the White House announced Tuesday.
  • “This very temporary measure is not going to solve the supply issue at the pump nor is it a solution to gas prices that have doubled in the last year,” Rep. Fred Upton, the top Republican on a House energy subcommittee, told the DCNF.

President Joe Biden’s decision to tap the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) was derided by top GOP lawmakers and experts who said the move was political and won’t move the needle on gasoline prices.

The federal government will release 32 million barrels of oil from the SPR and accelerate the release of 18 million barrels that had already been congressionally mandated, the White House announced Tuesday. Biden’s move to release crude oil from the nation’s emergency reserves was made alongside China, India, Japan, South Korea and the U.K., marking the first internationally coordinated release of emergency oil reserves.

However, experts suggested that the action was likely a political reaction to ever-rising prices at the pump and said it wouldn’t have a significant long term effect.

“It’s possible to say, ‘okay, this is something that politically, if not economically, requires intervention.’ The problem might be that, actually they started talking about doing something back in August,” Kevin Book, a National Petroleum Council member and managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“The White House was aware of these rising prices and concerned about them, and started taking steps towards intervention and created an expectation for intervention,” he continued. “So, even if the economic reality of five or maybe 10 cents a gallon of short term impact isn’t that big of a deal, doing nothing might look like a really big political problem.”

Book added that the release would have a minimal effect on oil prices, which had already declined over the last several weeks as reports of such a move became public. The price of oil is expected to decrease in the next couple of months due to normal seasonal market fluctuations, according to Book.

A Goldman Sachs report published last week echoed Book’s comments, arguing that tapping the SPR is a “short-term fix to a structural deficit” and was already priced-in to the market. Oil prices may even increase more than expected due to the move, the report concluded.

Biden even acknowledged that he doesn’t have a near-term fix for higher prices and that tapping reserves would barely have an effect during a CNN town hall in October. His administration has mulled an SPR release for months.

But, like Book, Chamber of Commerce Global Energy Institute Senior Vice President Christopher Guith said Tuesday that the White House should focus on long term policies rather than “ineffectual band aids.”

‘A cynical move’

Biden, meanwhile, has faced heavy criticism for his administration’s anti-fossil fuel actions, which include revoking the Keystone XL pipeline permit and banning new oil and gas leases on federal lands. While the president has set ambitious clean energy goals, gasoline prices have risen to their highest level in nearly a decade, government data showed.

Gas prices are tightly tied to the price of crude oil.

“This very temporary measure is not going to solve the supply issue at the pump nor is it a solution to gas prices that have doubled in the last year,” Michigan Rep. Fred Upton, the top Republican on a House energy subcommittee, told the DCNF.

The SPR was established in the 1970s as a tool to help the U.S. survive future energy crises where the global supply of oil dried up. The total inventory is estimated at around 604 million barrels of oil which is kept in deep underground storage caverns in Texas and Louisiana.

The last time the U.S. tapped the SPR was in 2011 when former President Barack Obama ordered a strategic release amid the Libyan civil war, a move that disrupted the Middle Eastern nation’s oil exports.

“President Biden’s policies are hiking inflation and energy prices for the American people,” Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member John Barrasso said in a statement. “Tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve will not fix the problem.”

“We are experiencing higher prices because the administration and Democrats in Congress are waging a war on American energy,” he continued.

Dan Kish, a senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, said the move was like someone eating everything from the pantry then “shooting the farmers.”

“This is a cynical move by a guy who’s done everything in his power to restrict production here at home and in North America,” Kish told the DCNF. “All the while watching Russia become our number two supplier of foreign oil.”

Kish noted that oil prices have increased since Biden announced the release, a sign that it would have little effect on gasoline prices.

Republican Whip Steve Scalise said the SPR is strictly for emergency purposes in response to a question from the DCNF during an October roundtable. If Biden wanted to lower prices, he would make it easier for firms to drill and construct domestic pipelines, the Louisiana Republican added.

“The SPR is not to be used as a piggy bank just to bail you out when your failed policies create higher gas prices,” Scalise said.

“The answer is very straightforward and it’s right under our feet,” he continued. “Instead of trying to drain what’s left of our reserves, we ought to be producing more energy and creating more jobs here in America to take leverage away from OPEC countries and to take leverage away from Russia.”

COLUMN BY

THOMAS CATENACCI

Energy and environment reporter. Follow Thomas on Twitter

RELATED ARTICELS:

Trump Responds After Biden Announces Release Of Oil From Strategic Petroleum Reserves

Oil Prices Rise After Biden Announces Emergency Action

Joe Manchin Again Urges Biden To Reinstate Keystone XL Pipeline

Biden’s Energy Secretary Fails To Answer Question About Oil Industry

Environmentalists Are Making Putin Stronger Than Ever

White House Adviser Says There’s An ‘Energy Crisis,’ Doubles Down On Calls For Boosted Foreign Oil, Gas Production

Oil Prices Surge Again After OPEC Ignores Biden

Is The Shift To Renewable Energy Propelling Us Into An Energy Crisis?

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Canadian Liberals War against Liquefied Natural Gas is killing jobs and prosperity

/in /by

President Obama and Democrats have declared a war against coal. This has led to the U.S. coal energy industry to face regulatory burdens that kill jobs and prosperity. It also leads to higher cost for electricity. The Liberal government of Canada has learned from the American president and has declared its own war against Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG or CH4).

Sheila Gunn Reid reports, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is safe, low carbon and clean burning.

It has the support of local BC mayors, Premier Christy Clark and First Nations. LNG has the potential to pull the entire country out of a recession. So what’s the hold up?The Federal Liberals are the hold up.

Sheila explains how and why in her video.

Lear more.