JUST IN: Rick Scott And Jennifer Granholm Clash Over The 'Stupidest Decision I Can Imagine'

8 months ago

At today's Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) questioned Energy Sec. Jennifer Granholm about LNG exports.

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Transcript

00:00 Thank you, Chair. Thank you all for being here. Secretary Granholm, the Biden administration

00:05 announced that they were going to pause pending LNG export projects, which seems like the

00:11 stupidest decision I can imagine. So in my state, we export LNG. We have through our

00:18 ports. We put a lot of money when I was governor into our ports, we export it. And so if you

00:22 look around the world, they want our LNG. We've got a war going on in Europe. We don't

00:29 want people depending on Russia. So we're exporting to Europe. We're exporting to Asia.

00:37 The people, the bad guys are the ones that produce the oil. A lot of them, Russia, Iran.

00:43 So if we don't do the exports, so where do our allies buy it? They have to buy more from

00:50 Russia. They have to buy more from Iran. So Iran's invaded Ukraine. Iran is trying to

00:56 destroy Israel. So this makes it one economically, it hurts my state. But number two, from a

01:04 from the standpoint of what's going on in the world, this is the stupidest decision

01:07 ever. So can you explain it to me? Yeah, just to clarify a point. This is a pause. It is

01:14 not a halt. Why would we pause so that we can evaluate as we do and are required to

01:20 do what is in the public interest. We do a study every few years. Right now is when we're

01:25 doing this study to determine whether the enormous increase in authorizations. Did Russia

01:32 pause going into Ukraine? Has Iran paused? All of the current exports are still happening.

01:38 All of the current authorizations, which goes up to 48 billion cubic feet, are all proceeding.

01:45 Did you pause the new pending export projects? Pending. But everything that is, we are currently

01:50 the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas and we will remain the largest exporter

01:56 of liquidified natural gas. It is a temporary pause. Do you understand what you're doing

02:02 to our allies? So we can study the impacts. Secretary, wait. We've talked with our allies.

02:06 What are you doing to our allies? We've talked with our allies about this. They have very

02:11 well understand that this is a temporary pause while we do an analysis of what the impacts

02:16 are in the United States. What would the analysis be? I'm happy to tell you. Stop. The world

02:23 is at war. They need our energy. And they will continue to get it, sir. You're telling

02:29 them, no, we're going to slow it down. No, that's not what we're telling them. That's

02:33 what a pause means. A pause means on future approvals. We have so much approved that we

02:39 are well saturating the globe if those authorizations are built out. We have 14 billion cubic feet

02:47 of capacity right now. That makes us the largest in the world right now. What would you have

02:51 to study? Another 12 billion cubic feet that are under construction. None of that is stopping.

02:56 It is only a pause for a study that will be completed in months. What do you have to study?

03:03 What sort of study? We want to sell LNG. There are four things we're studying. To be able

03:08 to answer your question, there are four things we're studying. One is what is the impact

03:13 domestically on our manufacturers if we export almost half of our capacity for producing

03:19 natural gas? What is the impact in terms of cost? Number one. Number two, what is the

03:25 impact, the life cycle analysis on the export of LNG? Number three, what is the impact on

03:31 our allies overseas? What is the demand we're going to be seeing to make sure that they

03:35 are well supplied and that they have the energy that they need? Do you have any manufacturer

03:41 call you and say, gosh, I'm worried because we're selling LNG overseas? There are a lot

03:48 of domestic concerns. In fact, we've gotten letters on both sides of the aisle here about

03:53 what does it mean for costs at home if you export almost half of what you currently produce?

04:00 What is the impact from a supply and demand point? It's a question. We're only doing --

04:04 Export nothing? Should we do that with everything we export?

04:09 As we authorize massive amounts of exports, we need to know what is the impact on America,

04:18 on our American manufacturers, on our homeowners. What is the cost?

04:23 Secretary, with that analysis, do you think we ought to put pauses on exporting anything

04:27 else we manufacture in this country? The reason why we're doing this is because

04:30 there's been such an extraordinary increase in authorizations. When we did our last study,

04:36 we were only exporting 4 billion cubic feet. Now we have authorized 48 billion. Not all

04:43 of that will be built, but the point is we need to go eyes open to see what is the impact

04:49 on us at home as well as on our allies and to have our labs do a modeling to make sure

04:55 that we follow the science and understand what the impacts are before we start to approve

05:01 a whole bunch more. So if you were head of commerce, then you'd

05:04 start pausing exports of manufacturing goods because you think, man, that's going to cause

05:08 the cost of manufacturing goods for Americans to go up. That makes -- it makes zero sense

05:12 and it's having a dramatic impact on my state. So I think you made a horrible decision and

05:17 I hope you'll change. Thank you, Senator Scott.

JUST IN: Rick Scott And Jennifer Granholm Clash Over The 'Stupidest Decision I Can Imagine'

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