"Earlier this month, the Republican Governors Public Policy Committee sent a letter to President Biden, blaming rising gas prices on his administration’s energy policies and calling on him to back an industry wishlist that includes repealing air pollution standards, increasing oil and gas leasing, and lifting the temporary pause on permits for new LNG export terminals. The group also hosted a press conference at a refinery in Louisiana, calling on Biden to “unleash American energy!” Theatrics aside, the Biden administration—which has overseen record levels of oil and gas production—is not the LNG industry’s biggest problem, Europe is.

Two weeks before that presser in Louisiana, EU officials announced the finalization of a measure that the gas industry has been fighting for more than a year: a time limit for long-term gas contracts. Only those that can show they are “abating” the emissions associated with their product can get around this ban, leaving producers with a new challenge: convincing the world that liquefied natural gas, a fossil fuel, is actually a climate solution.

It’s just the latest battle for the methane gas industry, which has struggled with profitability throughout its existence. Winning the fight in 2015 to lift the United States’ decades-old ban on crude oil exports was a lifeline to American shale drillers. Then the pandemic knocked them for a loop and oil majors like Exxon and Chevron took the opportunity to swoop up assets and acquire smaller players. In 2022, gas was back on top: it took industry lobbyists just about a month to turn Putin’s invasion of Ukraine into a boon for gas exports in the form of a U.S.-European Commission commitment to replace Russian gas with American LNG."

Andy Rowell and Amy Westervelt report for Drilled June 19, 2024. [2]