Parting gift: Biden study threatens to derail core Trump promise

A study released in the final days of Joe Biden's presidency could complicate Donald Trump's promise to "drill, baby, drill."

The Department of Energy study was issued in December as the planned end point to the Biden administration's pause on liquefied natural gas, or LNG, exports until their climate and economic impact was more clear, and the researchers found that additional LNG export terminals were not needed to to meet global demand and would actually raise energy prices, reported Rolling Stone.

“It seems clear that they looked at the evidence and saw some serious risks of overbuilding LNG exports,” said Alan Zibel, research director for energy and environmental issues at the nonprofit Public Citizen. “Because what’s already been approved is insane. We’re talking about the fourth wave of these things. Wave one is built, wave two is being built, wave three is approved, these are facilities that would come online way down the road, in five, six, seven years.”

The outgoing administration ended up being more critical of LNG than environmentalists had hoped, and while the Trump administration is expected to approve any LNG project that comes along, the DOE's study provides a strong basis to challenge export permits in court.

“The DOE report is a formal, public-interest assessment of the impacts of public interest in expanding LNG exports," said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy and Climate Program.

Environmental groups and public interest law firms will be able to quote from the department's own report to argue that new terminals do not meet the requirements in the Natural Gas Act, which should bolster their legal challenges against DOE permits.

“Under the Natural Gas Act you have to demonstrate an economic benefit to the U.S. to show that it’s in the public interest,” Zibel said. “For the terminals in Mexico, there’s clearly no U.S. jobs benefit, and now this report is saying that excessive U.S. LNG exports will have negative economic impacts for U.S. citizens, so those are going to be much harder to justify.”