Federal court ends pause on LNG export project approvals

By Greg LaRose
Contributing Writer

(lailluminator.com) — A federal judge has sided with Louisiana and 16 other states that sued to block the Biden administration’s stoppage of permits for liquified natural gas export terminals.

U.S. District Judge James Cain Jr., from Louisiana’s Western District Court in Lake Charles, issued a stay on Monday (July 1) that immediately ends the U.S. Department of Energy’s hold on LNG export terminal projects. His order, heralded as a major win for the fossil fuel industry, doesn’t result in any such LNG projects being approved immediately. It merely resumes the approval process.

In January, the Biden administration halted reviews of new LNG export applications to countries that were not part of free trade agreements with the United States. Energy department officials said they needed time to review potential climate risks of projects before approving exports.

Environmentalists supported the delay with hopes it would temper the boom of LNG export projects, especially along the Gulf Coast.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which operates independently of the Department of Energy (DOE) and federal government, has approved some 20 proposed new or expanded LNG facilities and related pipelines, all expected to be operational in the coming years. Monday’s federal court order resuscitates many of those projects.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill celebrated the decision from Cain, a federal court appointee of former President Donald Trump.

“This is great news for Louisiana, our 16 state partners in this fight, and the entire country,” Murrill said in a statement. “As Judge Cain mentioned in his ruling, there is roughly $61 billion dollars of pending infrastructure at risk to our state from this illegal pause. LNG has an enormous and positive impact on Louisiana, supplying clean energy for the entire world, and providing good jobs here at home.”

In his order, Cain wrote that the Department of Energy’s action to hold up permitting to non-free trade agreement (FTA) countries “is completely without reason or logic and is perhaps the epiphany of ideocracy.”

This is not the first piece of Biden environmental policy thwarted in Cain’s court. In January, he issued a preliminary injunction that blocked a White House effort to treat climate infractions as civil rights violations in Louisiana. Murrill sued to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to keep it from enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which would have allowed the federal government to make race-based considerations when enforcing anti-pollution laws.

“Pollution does not discriminate,” Cain said in his January order.

The stall on LNG projects has been turned into political fodder for opponents of the Biden policy. With future American exports in doubt, countries in Europe and Asia in need of a reliable natural gas supply are forced to rely on sources at odds with the U.S. such as Russia and China, they have argued.

This article originally published in the July 8, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.