How Biden Regulators Are Creating the Next Enron

As part of its costly efforts to try to force a flagging energy transition into being via heavy regulation and debt-funded subsidies, the Biden administration has continued to elevate its war on natural gas on several fronts.

This 2024 offensive started in January, when the White House invoked a poorly reasoned “pause” in permit approvals for new LNG export facilities in a clear effort to impede the growth of the domestic industry and deny gas producers access to international markets. Justifications offered for the move by the White House, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and other administration spokespersons are absurd on their face, failing to disguise the clear political motivations at play.

Speaking at the CERAWeek conference in Houston in March, Sec. Granholm said, “I predict that as we sit here next year… this will be well in the rearview mirror.” Granholm added the pause is “like other studies we’ve done in the past.”  While that last bit is true as far as it goes – conducting environmental impact studies are a regular part of the federal government’s business – she would be at great pains to identify any precedent in which the government halted progress on an entire sector of multi-billion-dollar projects for a year to conduct one.