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The Biden-Harris administration is allegedly covering up an internal study conducted in 2023 that would have rendered its moratorium on natural gas projects unnecessary, according to leaders on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.
The White House and the Department of Energy paused permitting for liquefied natural gas export projects in January—a policy critics said would cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs—to allow time for a federal study on those projects’ environmental, economic, and national security impacts. That study, according to federal officials, wouldn’t be completed until early 2025, effectively throwing the brakes on dozens of major fossil fuel projects.
According to a letter that Republican leaders on the House Oversight Committee sent to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Wednesday, however, there is evidence the Department of Energy already conducted such a study months before announcing the policy. And, the lawmakers added, the agency has sought to stonewall information requests to obtain that study.
The saga is the latest instance of the Biden-Harris administration facing accusations of playing fast and loose with federal rules to push its anti-fossil-fuel agenda. The administration’s efforts to phase out gas-powered cars in favor of electric vehicles, limit fossil fuel leasing, and crack down on traditional power plants, for example, have all faced legal challenges from states and businesses.
The Republicans’ claim stems from a June information request filed by the government watchdog group Government Accountability & Oversight, that asked for any federal study on natural gas exports conducted last year and transmitted to the Department of Energy. The group eventually filed a lawsuit against the Department of Energy, accusing it of stalling the request.
In court filings cited by the Oversight Committee leaders and reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, the Department of Energy acknowledged in September that it completed the information request, which yielded 97 responsive documents totaling 4,354 pages.
The Department of Energy, though, never shared those documents. On Friday, it sent its final response to the request to Government Accountability and Oversight, saying it understood the group’s request to be seeking only any “final” natural gas export study and that it did not find a “final” study in its search. The group’s information request never specified that it only sought “final” studies rather than potential draft studies.
“The clear implication is that one or more draft studies do exist, and DOE is attempting to cover that up,” Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.), Oversight energy subcommittee chairman Pat Fallon (R., Texas), and Rep. Clay Higgins (R., La.) wrote to Granholm on Wednesday.
“The Committee demands that DOE finally provide complete and accurate information related to the Committee’s investigation and all relevant studies or drafts thereof that may have been conducted or prepared prior to DOE’s January 26, 2024, imposition of the Biden-Harris LNG export ban,” the lawmakers added in the letter, which was first obtained by the Free Beacon.
In a statement to the Free Beacon, Government Accountability & Oversight attorney Chris Horner characterized the Department of Energy’s actions as a “full-blown scandal.”
“The Energy Department says, on second thought, it has no records at all,” said Horner. “How did so many potentially responsive records vanish overnight? What happened was the Department of Energy effectively rewrote our request to engineer this reversal and a seemingly less-damning ‘no records’ response.”
“This confirms our information that the purported rationale for this reckless January 2024 ‘pause’ on further natural gas exports was a fabrication: the study was already performed in 2023 and was spiked,” he added. “This administration did not spike the study because it supported their desired strangulation of fossil energy. The information that led us to this inquiry was, in fact, that the study was spiked because it surprised the administration by once again touting the benefits of natural gas exports.”
In other words, according to Horner, the Department of Energy possessed a nonpartisan study showing the environmental, economic, and national security benefits of continued natural gas exports when it chose to block those same projects earlier this year. Horner said the agency ignored its own internal information to appease left-wing climate activists.
Major environmental nonprofits, many of whom have funneled millions of dollars to Democratic campaigns, had repeatedly called on the Biden-Harris administration to block natural gas export projects in the months before the administration announced the action. Activists argued the downstream emissions of the projects would lead to worse climate change.
The Department of Energy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The administration’s moratorium on natural gas exports, meanwhile, has faced stiff opposition from Republicans, Democrats, national security officials, and industry groups. One study commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute concluded natural gas exports could add $73 billion to the economy by 2040 and create 453,000 jobs.
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