House to Consider Bill Making Trump Admin's Natural Gas Export Rule Into Law

The House is set to vote late next week on a bill that’d codify into law the Trump administration’s recently-finalized rule that exempts small scale imports and exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from environmental reviews.

What does the bill do?

• The Ensuring Small Scale LNG Certainty and Access Act would grant applications for imports or exports of LNG that don’t exceed 0.14 billion cubic feet per day “without modification or delay”.
• An application’s approval means that an environmental impact statement or environmental assessment wouldn’t be required.
• The Dept. of Energy’s rule exempting small scale LNG import or export applications from environmental reviews was finalized on July 25 and took effect on August 24, 2018.

What are lawmakers saying?

Sponsoring Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH) said his bill would help encourage exports of American-produced LNG:

“The U.S. is currently the world’s largest producer of natural gas, with trillions of cubic feet of recoverable natural gas beneath our feet. We should be doing all we can to take advantage of this abundant resource, and it is my hope that these bills will help further that goal.”

House Democrats who opposed this bill in committee, including Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ), wrote of the bill:

“It would prematurely and unnecessarily enshrine a Trump Administration pro-fossil fuel proposed rule into law. Approving another bill to expand natural gas exports would incent widespread fossil fuel extraction and higher domestic natural gas prices, with serious climate, public health, and economic consequences for American consumers and manufacturers.”

The House Energy and Commerce Committee passed this bill on a 35-15 vote. The bill is cosponsored by four Republicans and two Democrats.

Context

• In recent years the U.S. economy has seen a boom in extraction of oil and natural gas from shale.
• According to data from our partners at USAFacts, a non-partisan civic data initiative, throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, the total value of oil and gas extraction in the U.S. typically averaged in the $40-50 billion range.
• However, this decade it has consistently been above $200 billion including a peak of $338 billion in 2014.

Tell your reps whether you support or oppose the Small Scale LNG Certainty and Access Act and share your thoughts below!

— Eric Revell

(Photo Credit: iStock.com / nightman1965)