Senator Expects Trump to End Pause on Pending LNG Export Permits
The incoming Trump administration likely will end the Biden administration’s temporary pause on pending decisions for liquefied natural gas exports, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said late Nov. 13.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
“I feel very confident that it’s going to be un-paused,” Kennedy told Export Compliance Daily. Although Republicans will gain full control of Congress in January, “I don’t expect Congress to have to act [on LNG] because I expect [President-elect Donald] Trump and his team to un-pause it pretty quickly.”
Kennedy, whose state is a major player in LNG, said that ending the freeze would help Europe reduce its reliance on Russian natural gas. “We need to help Europe,” he said. When the Biden administration announced the pause in January, “my phone started ringing off the hook from my [government and industry] contacts in Europe, and they were scared to death. They need the natural gas.”
Although the Trump transition team had no immediate comment on the fate of the LNG pause, Trump pledged during his presidential campaign to generally ease restrictions on American energy production.
The Biden administration has said the pause would allow it to review criteria for approving LNG export applications, including the impact on climate change (see 2401260070). It has said it expects to finish the review by the end of the first quarter of 2025 (see 2404230042), and it has insisted that the U.S. has sufficient LNG capacity to meet the needs of its allies in Europe and Asia (see 2402090005).
Republican lawmakers have objected to the pause, saying it has created uncertainty among allies about the reliability of U.S. fuel supplies (see 2403190053 and 2402070082). Although a federal judge ordered the Biden administration in July to end the pause (see 2407030058), DOJ filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in August.