The House Oversight and Accountability Committee is bringing in top Biden administration energy officials for a Dec. 4 hearing on the administration’s decision to pause approvals for certain new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities.
Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs Chairman Pat Fallon, a Republican from Texas, will be hosting the hearing, to which senior Department of Energy (DOE) official Brad Crabtree and top Biden climate adviser John Podesta have been invited. The hearing will be a continuation of oversight into one of the Biden administration’s most aggressive policy moves against conventional energy, and the lawmakers intend to inquire about allegations that the DOE effectively buried a 2023 draft study that would have undermined the justification for the pause before officially announcing the freeze in January 2024.
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s decision to pause new LNG exports harms our energy production and security. The House Oversight and Accountability Committee has repeatedly called on the Biden-Harris Administration’s Department of Energy to provide full transparency about its decision to ban new LNG exports,” Fallon said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “However, Biden-Harris Administration officials may have obstructed the investigation and hid critical information from Congress and the American people. This hearing is an opportunity to gain further answers for the American people and hear from those behind the policy why LNG exports have been effectively banned, causing damage to the industry and workforce.”
The Biden-Harris administration stated that it must conduct a review of potential environmental, economic and security impacts of LNG exports to ensure that approving new capacity is still in the public interest when it officially announced the pause. However, Government Accountability and Oversight (GAO), a government watchdog group, says that the administration may have actually conducted — or started to conduct — such a review in 2023 before effectively burying it because it may have been producing politically inconvenient conclusions.
GAO’s accusations, first reported by the DCNF in early October, prompted the Oversight and Accountability Committee and other lawmakers to demand answers and transparency on the matter from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. The DOE is rumored to be preparing to release its analysis on LNG climate impacts sometime this week as Americans enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday.
It is not entirely clear how the study and its findings may impact the regulatory process for LNG exports or developers’ appetite for legal risks, though the incoming Trump administration is reportedly gearing up to free up exports shortly upon returning to power in January 2025.
Featured Image Credit: The White House
