Capito says Biden's liquified natural gas pause

A decision by President Biden to halt new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects in the United States puts “the Ayatollah over Appalachia” and “Putin over Pennsylvania,” U.S Senator Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said Thursday.

Capito, the Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, participated in a press conference with her colleagues to discuss the Biden administration’s decision to halt new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects.

“I talked earlier last week about why this decision was made,” Capito said. “And I think it’s absolutely a political strategy move to try to attract more young environmental voters after some of the decisions that he’s made and to me, do we really want to stake our national security and our international reliability and security on such a flimsy and I think, unfounded decision.

Capito said the United States is not the only producer of natural gas.

“So today, I stand here clearly to talk about why our natural gas development is so absolutely important here with my friends who have natural gas, a lot of natural gas, in all of our states. But if you look in the United States, one-third of the natural gas production that occurs in this country occurs in the region of West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio,” Capito said. “Number two is Russia. And number three is Iran.”

Halting new LNG projects adversely impacts the states producing natural gas, Capito stated.

“So with West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, what does this do? It shuts down workers, shuts down families being able to stay in their communities, feed their families, and provide for the national security by being the energy independent country that we know they are,” she said.

“So you know, what I say is Biden’s decision is he is choosing Putin over Pennsylvania. He’s choosing the Ayatollah over Appalachia. And he is also choosing the Kremlin over the Kanawha in West Virginia,” Capito said. “And he’s choosing Moscow over the Marcellus Shale. It’s clear in his decision. It’s a political decision that harms not just us, but greatly harms our allies.”

U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., also held a hearing Thursday to examine the administration’s pause on liquefied natural gas (LNG) export approvals and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) process for assessing LNG export applications. During the hearing, Manchin stressed the importance of protecting American consumers and businesses while supporting allies and trading partners. He also questioned whether facts or political motivation led to the White House’s decision to pause permit approvals for exports of LNG to non-Free Trade Agreement (FTA) countries.

“I believe that our first priority is ensuring that none of our exports harm U.S. families, businesses, or our economy. Beyond that, we also have a responsibility to our allies and trading partners who may have no other choice but to turn to countries that don’t share our values if they can’t count on American support. The United States has shown that we can do both of those things,” Manchin said.

“Over the past seven years, our LNG production has ramped up from essentially no exports in 2016 to a peak capacity of around 14 billion cubic feet (bcf) per day today, which is about 14 percent of current U.S. production capacity and more than any other exporting nation,” Manchin said. “To support these increased exports, we’re producing more energy than ever in our country — 4.7 billion barrels of crude oil and 37 trillion cubic feet of gas in 2023. And during that time, our domestic natural gas prices have remained flat on average — the average Henry Hub price was about $2.50 both in 2016 and in 2023. But at the same time, as we’re producing and exporting more than ever, American consumers are using a record amount of gas — now more than 32 trillion cubic feet annually. So let me be clear—a lot has changed in a few years and there are sensible reasons to update the market assessments that DOE uses when reviewing export applications to ensure the trajectory we’re on won’t risk harming American families and businesses. But these types of decisions should be firmly based on facts, not politics.”

Manchin also questioned the facts behind the administration’s pause. “Unfortunately, the administration hasn’t actually done its new market assessment yet or presented us any facts that justify this pause at all,” Manchin said. “They do throw around some data points — for example they tout that the U.S. is on track to export 26 billion cubic feet per day by the end of this decade, between facilities currently operating and those now under construction.”

But my question is this: where is the analysis showing that 26 is the magic number and that’s all we can do? It seems to me that 26 billion cubic feet per day is just what happened to be in the hopper when the White House made the political calculation to pause exports.”