Karen Feridun
1,000 signatures reached
To: President Joe Biden and the Department of Energy
No More LNG Export Approvals!
The Department of Energy’s (DOE) 2024 Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export study makes it clear that President Biden and the DOE cannot find LNG projects to be in the public interest and must, therefore, reject pending LNG export applications. The DOE’s analysis shows that gas exports are a climate disaster that harm communities wherever the gas is extracted, processed, and transported. Meanwhile, competition with foreign markets for methane gas will just increase the price for consumers. Secretary Jennifer Granholm noted that the study found that “the amounts that have already been approved will be more than sufficient to meet global demand for U.S. LNG for decades to come.” Protect our communities and our planet from harmful and unnecessary LNG exports before your administration comes to an end.
Why is this important?
President Biden put a pause on 18 Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export approvals last year to allow the Department of Energy (DOE) to do a study that was released just before the holidays. He was acting on the calls made by environmental and climate advocates and all of you who added your voices via petitions and many other actions. We argued that the DOE was failing to do its job of determining if proposed LNG projects are in the public interest. The analysis released last month was refreshingly frank it its findings that, indeed, they are not in the public interest at all and that they are unnecessary to boot! Secretary Granholm's statement provides a concise overview of the study's conclusions.
Unfortunately, the study did not prompt the Biden administration to use the analysis to reject pending and future LNG export projects.
The controversial pause found its way into the presidential campaign when Donald Trump vowed to undo it and approve the projects when he takes office.
The study's release triggered a 60-day comment period that is scheduled to end on February 18. This petition will be submitted to the docket, but it's not enough. Here's why:
- We don't know if Trump will terminate the comment period on January 20. Therefore, we need to gather as many comments as we can by January 19.
- We don't know if Trump will take down the comments already submitted.
- We do know that a petition, even if it's signed by a million people, will only count as one comment (it's something in a category of things I call Stupid Regulator Tricks). Although they don't count as separate comments, a large number of signatures gets regulators' attention.
Given what we do know and what we can only guess about at this point, we're asking everyone to take the additional step of submitting an individual comment to urge the administration to reject the pending projects. That way, the comments will be counted if Trump doesn't remove them. We've come up with a way of collecting comments that makes it easy for you to submit one and allows us to store your documents if he does remove them. Your comments will be valuable for judges to consider in the court cases that will surely ensue.
You can use what we're calling our EZ form here. If you prefer to submit a comment directly to Regulations.gov, you can find it here. We ask that you sign our petition even if you don't want to submit an individual comment. We'll post it to the docket on January 19.
Unfortunately, the study did not prompt the Biden administration to use the analysis to reject pending and future LNG export projects.
The controversial pause found its way into the presidential campaign when Donald Trump vowed to undo it and approve the projects when he takes office.
The study's release triggered a 60-day comment period that is scheduled to end on February 18. This petition will be submitted to the docket, but it's not enough. Here's why:
- We don't know if Trump will terminate the comment period on January 20. Therefore, we need to gather as many comments as we can by January 19.
- We don't know if Trump will take down the comments already submitted.
- We do know that a petition, even if it's signed by a million people, will only count as one comment (it's something in a category of things I call Stupid Regulator Tricks). Although they don't count as separate comments, a large number of signatures gets regulators' attention.
Given what we do know and what we can only guess about at this point, we're asking everyone to take the additional step of submitting an individual comment to urge the administration to reject the pending projects. That way, the comments will be counted if Trump doesn't remove them. We've come up with a way of collecting comments that makes it easy for you to submit one and allows us to store your documents if he does remove them. Your comments will be valuable for judges to consider in the court cases that will surely ensue.
You can use what we're calling our EZ form here. If you prefer to submit a comment directly to Regulations.gov, you can find it here. We ask that you sign our petition even if you don't want to submit an individual comment. We'll post it to the docket on January 19.
How it will be delivered
Electronically to President Biden and DOE and via the docket for the study.