The Biden administration secretly altered its own study of the effects of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to justify delaying LNG export approvals in 2024, Department of Energy (DOE) sources told the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF).
The original study, completed in September 2023, found that LNG exports would have a positive environmental impact, the four anonymous sources told the DCNF. But, they said, the final report released to the public in January 2024 omitted these findings, enabling the administration to claim that LNG exports would exacerbate the “climate crisis.”
One DOE source told the DCNF:
The Energy Department has learned that former Secretary [Jennifer] Granholm and the Biden White House intentionally buried a lot of data and released a skewed study to discredit the benefits of American LNG. They were prioritizing their own political ambitions over the interests of the American people, and the administration intentionally deceived the American public to advance an agenda that harmed American energy security, the environment and American lives.
Emission Omission
According to the Daily Caller, the final draft version of the DOE’s study was “essentially completed … by the end of September 2023, and that version was ready to be presented to top Biden officials shortly thereafter, Trump DOE sources told the DCNF.”
However:
At the end of September 2023, a Biden administration official left a comment on the final draft version that instructed others to halt work on it until further notice, despite other language in the document stating that the final version was to be published sometime around the end of September 2023, Trump DOE sources told the DCNF. That version of the study was never released publicly, and the Biden DOE considered it to be a “working document” given that the agency subsequently categorized it as part of an internal deliberative process, according to DOE sources.
When the final version of the report was made public in January 2024, the sources said, it omitted a key section from the September version. That section, the Daily Caller noted, “found that U.S. LNG exports would bring down global [carbon] emissions by displacing more polluting sources of energy abroad.” That finding is hardly surprising; The New American reported that LNG “produces half the carbon dioxide of coal for the same amount of energy, and 30 percent less than oil.”
Cover Story
By deleting the finding from the final report, the administration gave itself cover for doing what it already wanted to do. On January 26, 2024, President Joe Biden signed an executive order pausing LNG export approvals while his administration supposedly studied whether or not they should be resumed.
In a statement at the time, Biden said:
My Administration is announcing today a temporary pause on pending decisions of Liquefied Natural Gas exports — with the exception of unanticipated and immediate national security emergencies. During this period, we will take a hard look at the impacts of LNG exports on energy costs, America’s energy security, and our environment. This pause on new LNG approvals sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time.
While MAGA Republicans willfully deny the urgency of the climate crisis, condemning the American people to a dangerous future, my Administration will not be complacent. We will not cede to special interests.
Of course, whether Biden had any idea what he was signing, let alone what words were being attributed to him, is in serious doubt. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) later alleged that, just weeks after the announcement, Biden vehemently denied to Johnson that he had signed an order pausing LNG export approvals, insisting that he had merely ordered a study of their effects.
Leading the Science
The same day as Biden’s announcement, the DOE issued a press release stating that it would “initiate a process” to determine whether additional LNG exports were “in the public interest.”
Granholm — whose cognitive capacity, even if seriously misdirected, has never been questioned — went even further than Biden, wrote the Daily Caller:
Granholm claimed that the final version of the study released to the public in December 2024 demonstrates that “in every scenario, increases in LNG exports would lead to increases in global net emissions,” and that “a business-as-usual approach is neither sustainable nor advisable.” When the pause was first announced in January 2024, Granholm said in a statement that the review “will ensure that DOE remains a responsible actor using the most up-to-date economic and environmental analyses.”
The Trump DOE sources told the DCNF they expect the evidence of their allegations to be released to Congress and the public “soon.” Then perhaps there will be definitive proof that Granholm’s “most up-to-date” analysis had been brought up to date by deleting an inconvenient truth, to borrow a phrase from former Vice President Al Gore.
As one DOE source told the DCNF:
At the time Granholm said [the DOE was using the most up-to date analyses], they were literally hiding from the public the most up-to-date economic and environmental analyses available because [they] contradicted the very ban that they were trying to institute…. When you look at what they hid and what they were saying at the same time, it becomes very clear that they weren’t interested in following the science to make decisions in the best interest of the American people. They were interested in making decisions that benefited them politically, and manipulating the science by whatever means necessary.
