Biden Administration Approves LNG Permit, But Ban Is Not Over

As Bloomberg reported, the Biden administration and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) have granted their first U.S. liquefied natural gas export permit in months.

Specifically, this permit granted a five-year license to private equity investor Wes Edens’ company New Fortress Energy Inc., which will develop small-scale LNG export plant known as Fast LNG offshore near Altamira, Mexico. Last year, the DOE authorized New Fortress Energy to ship LNG to nations that have free trade agreements with the United States. Last week’s decision will allow the business to send gas to countries without such agreements.

The new permit does not authorize the company to increase its overall LNG exports, however.

While that news is welcome, it does not mean the Biden has abandoned hope of implementing its blanket ban on natural gas exports.

As Connecting the Dots has reported several times over recent months, President Joe Biden issued a directive to pause the federal government’s reviews of applications for licenses to export LNG from U.S. terminals in order to determine whether, in general, LNG exports harm the environment, and whether export applications should be considered through that lens of their impact on the climate. (A federal court ended that freeze in July, but the Biden administration still continue to defend it.)