On Thursday, the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that 16 US states, including Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, have filed a lawsuit to challenge the US federal government's ban on approving applications to export liquefied natural gas.
According to the lawsuit, the federal government cannot deny those permits.
Sixteen US States Sue Biden Administration
In January, President Joe Biden stated that the halt would give officials time to review the process of analyzing the economic and environmental impacts of projects seeking approval to export LNG in countries where fuel is in high demand, including Europe and Asia.
According to experts, the halt may jeopardize the construction of over a dozen gas export terminals originally intended for the Gulf of Mexico coast. Environmentalists and several locals are also quite concerned about the situation.
One analysis estimates that the 3.2 billion tons of greenhouse gases produced by all of the projected LNG projects shipping gas abroad would be equal to the emissions of the European Union.
"This pause on new LNG approvals sees the climate crisis for what it is—the existential threat of our time," Biden said in January, announcing the pause.
Furthermore, the lawsuit was filed in Lake Charles, Louisiana, federal court. It claims that as the region works to wean itself off of piped gas from Russia, the US Department of Energy's delay will hurt the economy and jeopardize efforts to provide reliable LNG supplies to foreign partners in Europe.
Climate Activists Rally Over LNG Export Projects
The last review of LNG export projects was in 2018 when export capacity was 4 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd). That capacity tripled, with the US emerging as the leading global LNG exporter last year, and projects in construction will likely push that capacity much higher by 2030.
Biden's support base, environmentalists, have protested the sudden growth. Protesters claim that new LNG projects have the potential to pollute nearby towns, lock in the world's dependency on fossil fuels for many years, and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas, through gas leaks and combustion emissions.
Environmentalists praised the move as a bold step.
Ben Jealous, head of the environmental non-profit organization Sierra Club, said the administration's historic efforts to meet the global commitment to phase out fossil fuels and confront the climate crisis head-on continue.
Furthermore, many sectors of the US economy, including steel, chemicals, food, and agriculture, are against unrestricted gas exports from the US because they believe it will jeopardize fuel costs and reliability.
An administration official stated, without naming them, that the suspension would only affect four projects with export approvals pending at the DOE. The DOE website indicated that the projects might be those of Sempra Infrastructure, Commonwealth LNG, and Energy Transfer ET.N.
