The United States is in the midst of a false debate. It supposedly is a choice between national security and fighting climate change. The debate has intensified with President Joe Biden’s decision to “pause” federal approval of a dozen or more liquified natural gas (LNG) projects that are pending or in various stages of planning.
U.S. LNG capacity has doubled in recent years and is set to double again under projects already approved, the White House has said. Seven LNG terminals are currently operating in the U.S., mostly in Louisiana and Texas, with up to five more expected to come online in the next few years, AP’s Matthew Daly reported. Biden's action would not affect those projects.
LNG from our country has been vital to European countries that had been heavily dependent on Russian gas before President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. At this point, there is more than enough LNG supply projected in the global marketplace to meet demand from Europe without adding more projects to the pipeline. “To be clear,” wrote The New York Times’ Stanley Reed, “in making this move, the Biden administration seems unlikely to jeopardize supplies to customers outside the United States this year or anytime soon.”
In fact, the International Agency (IEA) concluded that there is a risk of a gas glut. Bloomberg News reported: "The upshot is the world looks set to get through its second winter since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine curbed pipeline supplies without any major drama, even in the event of record-breaking cold blasts.”
Meantime, the U.S. and most other countries are failing to hit greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) targets, thus increasing the damage that climate change is causing and will cause. Natural gas has helped reduce global emissions because it mostly has displaced coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. But gas is not harmless; it emits both carbon dioxide and methane, which is even more potent.
It has been a valuable “bridge” fuel, but the projects that have been paused would have created infrastructure locking in the production of gas far into the future. As Biden put it, the pause on approvals “sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Benoit Morenne noted the growth of our nation’s LNG export capacity. When the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) conducted its last analysis into the impact of gas exports in 2018, U.S. LNG export capacity was less than 4 billion cubic feet a day, according to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. It has already more than tripled, and is set to nearly double again by 2030, she said. We need to be wary of creating a runaway train.
It would be far better to price GHG emissions and let the marketplace decide which energy projects make long-term sense. Indeed, if we removed the subsidy on natural gas, it might become clear to those proposing new LNG export terminals that they won’t find a market for the product once the price of gas reflects its true cost.