Biden won’t let America supply the world with low-carbon gas. It’s green energy madness

Many experts have questioned the wisdom of the Biden White House’s ordering a “pause” in permitting new export infrastructure for liquefied natural gas (LNG) since it was put in place in late January. Citing the strategic leverage in global affairs provided by America’s leading position in the LNG export market, critics contend that the pause – especially with its open-ended nature – will only serve to diminish confidence among US trading partners and allies in their ability to continue to rely on the US gas industry to fill their needs. 

Those opposed to the policy also contend that the pause has opened the door for competing exporting nations, like Qatar, Australia, and even Russia to ramp up their own exports and permanently seize bigger shares of the global market. Such concerns have been confirmed in recent months with moves by both Qatar and Russia to raise their own export volumes and install new infrastructure as the Biden White House fiddles.

A new study conducted by Berkeley Research Group (BRG) serves to confirm another criticism of the Biden pause, which is that US LNG exports result in lower greenhouse emissions than natural gas supplied by competing countries, and much lower compared with coal, the major competing fuel source in both Europe and Asia. BRG employed full life cycle methodologies and included “the most recent publicly available methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) data” to create results for eight European and five Asian countries for the year 2022.