U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently announced that the Department’s long-awaited study of LNG export impacts would be released by the end of the year. A new report, however, indicates a study may have already been completed – but was kept hidden from the public.
Recall that when the Biden-Harris administration justified its wildly unpopular – and potentially illegal – LNG export permitting pause by claiming that the Department need to conduct new analysis of LNG exports’ climate and economic impacts, despite ample data showing the benefits of LNG exports.
Just a month into the pause, it became clear that the policy was a product of an “intense” campaign funded by the Rockefellers, Michael Bloomberg, and other wealthy donors to limit LNG exports, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Did DOE already conduct an LNG analysis?
New findings from a watchdog group suggest that the Biden-Harris administration’s need to study the impacts of LNG exports – again, the entire justification for the pause – may have been a farce.
Bombshell public records obtained by Government Accountability and Oversight suggest that DOE may have already conducted a review of LNG export impacts, but tossed the study right before announcing the pause. The Daily Caller reports:
“An ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) legal battle between the agency and an independent group called Government Accountability and Oversight (GAO) reveals that the administration may have actually conducted — or started to conduct — such a review in 2023 before effectively burying it because it may have been producing politically inconvenient conclusions, according to GAO.” (emphasis added)
GAO first requested any LNG export study transmitted between the National Energy Technology Lab – the body that would conduct such a study – and DOE between January and October 2023. After GAO sued the DOE due to noncompliance with the request, DOE “conceded that there are at lest 97 documents, totaling thousands of pages, in its possession” that may respond to GAO’s request.
If there was a prior study, it was not released to the public. Instead, the Biden-Harris administration announced a ban on new LNG export permitting in January 2024 and tasked DOE with conducting a new review of climate and environmental impacts of LNG exports.
New changes in controversial study underpinning LNG export pause
To support the need for a LNG permitting freeze, instead of citing data from authoritative bodies like the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the White House relied on a “flawed study” by controversial keep-it-in-the-ground researcher Dr. Robert Howarth. Howarth’s outlier claims about the lifecycle emissions of LNG exports formed the backbone of the White House’s arguments on LNG.
Last week, Congressional Republicans led by Rep. August Pfluger (R-Tex.) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) sent a letter to DOE arguing that pause was “heavily influenced” by the Cornell professor, who has made widely-circulated, ludicrous claims that LNG is “worse than coal.”
The letter is just the latest escalation in scrutiny over Howarth’s data, whose work has been debunked, panned, criticized and labeled as being “riddled with errors.” It should come as no surprise that Howarth’s research is funded by the Park Foundation, a group that a 2018 Northeastern University study found to be one of the largest funders of anti-fracking research and activism.
The most egregious problem with Howarth’s data is that he keeps changing it. Since his research was published, he has quietly updated the central figure in his “LNG is worse than coal” thesis at least three times.
In the latest iteration of his paper, which was published on October 3, 2024, he argues that the emissions footprint for LNG as a fuel source is “33 percent greater than that for coal.” This is a far cry from the range he initially put forward in the version of his paper cited by the Department of Energy, which claimed that LNG emissions are “24 percent to 274 percent greater [than coal].” And that’s not to mention additional, inexplicable revisions in the intervening months.
Environmental activists vs. bipartisan lawmakers
In addition to broad Republican opposition, Congressional Democrats representing “must-win” districts in Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Carolina, and more have called on the administration to bring a “swift end” to the LNG export pause. The pause stalls export projects on the Gulf Coast, creates uncertainty in natural gas-producing states like Pennsylvania, and symbolizes the activist-backed climate agenda that repels swing-state voters.
The data is stacking up to show what informed observers have long thought: in enacting the LNG export pause, the Biden-Harris administration listened to progressive donors and environmental activists over the objections of dozens of bipartisan lawmakers and, potentially, even its own DOE.
Bottom Line: New revelations about a mysterious LNG export study conducted right before the Biden-Harris LNG export pause was issued raise serious questions about whether the administration suppressed its own research, instead leaning on shifting data from an activist researcher.
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