In last week’s lobby meetings, we asked MOCs to use last year’s EPRA bill as a basis for starting permitting reform negotiations. That bill included provisions to facilitate increased production and export of liquified natural gas (LNG). Part of the calculation for CCL’s support last year was that the market would not support development of all the proposed LNG and just because a facility was permitted did not mean it would be built. However, the new trade deals announced by the Trump administration for the EU and South Korea include huge purchases of US LNG. Production of LNG is harmful for the climate and extremely toxic for people living near production and export facilities, predominately low income people and people of color in the Gulf Coast “cancer alley”. How will the new reality of an administration policy determined to maximize LNG production impact CCL’s stance on permitting reform?
It's a good question, @Joanne Leovy. My initial thought is that these ‘trade deals’ are quite fragile. A normal trade deal like NAFTA is extremely detailed and well-documented and takes many years to negotiate. Trump's ‘deals’ are just vague and in some cases impossible to meet promises – like the EU's unrealistic promise to drastically increase its consumption of US LNG.
And I'm reminded of the ‘trade deal' Trump made with China in his first term where they promised to buy $200 billion worth of US exports, and then bought none. So there's precedent for a country making some silly promise in a ‘trade deal’ with Trump and then not following through and facing no consequences for it.
We also don't know if a new permitting reform deal will have anything related to LNG exports. It doesn't really need to, since the Trump administration is already approving as many LNG export terminal permits as quickly as possible. And I think LNG exporters will take a similar skeptical eye to these trade deal promises as I do.
But in any case, we'll evaluate whatever comprehensive permitting reform package comes from Congress and proceed from there. Presumably we'll get some good expert modeling like we did with the Energy Permitting Reform Act, which will inform our stance on any new bill.
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