Wright announces first new natural gas export approval of second Trump term

Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Trump administration’s first export authorization for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project Friday, part of a broader push to promote fossil fuel development and reverse the Biden administration’s promotion of renewables.

The Commonwealth LNG project, located in Cameron Parish, La., will have a projected export capacity of 1.2 billion cubic feet per day, Wright said in a statement.

“Today marks one of many steps that DOE will be taking to assure our future as a reliable energy supplier to the world and resume regular order to our regulatory responsibilities over natural gas exports,” Wright said.

Wright, a former fracking CEO, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have taken early steps to increase oil and gas development in the U.S., including orders by Burgum to expand the federal lands open to fossil fuel development. President Trump announced the formal creation of an energy council including Burgum and Wright on Friday.

The project comes after the Trump administration reversed a hold issued under the Biden administration on new LNG export approvals. In a report published in the final month of Biden’s presidency, the Energy Department determined that unrestricted LNG exports could lead to wholesale price hikes of up to 30 percent.

“[T]he more volumes of U.S. LNG are exported, the greater the risk of this global price volatility being imported into our domestic market and impacting U.S. consumers and manufacturers,” said Jennifer Granholm, Wright’s predecessor, in a statement accompanying the release of the report.

American LNG exports surged after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 as Western Europe ended imports of Russian oil and gas and the U.S. stepped in to fill the gap. The pause drew criticism from not only Republicans but Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman (D) and then-Sen. Bob Casey (D), who narrowly lost his seat to Sen. Dave McCormick (R) later that year.

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