'We Are Having No Problem With Any Of Those Exports': Sean Casten Rebuffs GOP LNG Export Complaints

4 months ago

During a House Science Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) questioned Dept. of Energy Deputy Secretary, David Turk, about the pause on liquefied natural gas exports.

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Transcript

00:00Member for UC request. Thank you Mr. Chairman. I'd ask unanimous consent to put into the record

00:05April 2024 Fusion Industry Association bold decadal vision paper. Seeing no opposition so

00:15ordered. The chair would note for the record that the next in order be Mr. Kasten and then

00:20Mr. Fleshman. Gentleman from Illinois is recognized for five minutes. Thank you very much Mr. Chair.

00:26Always a pleasure to go out to my friend Mr. Weber not least because I'd like to continue

00:29the conversation about the LNG pause. I talked about this with Secretary Granholm a few months

00:35ago and was kind enough to submit some responses to questions for the record. I want to just

00:40remind this committee of a couple of numbers. In the last decade there has been a 24 percent growth

00:44in U.S. consumption of natural gas. There has been a 53 percent increase in U.S. production of

00:50natural gas and there has been a 384 percent increase in the export of natural gas. We are

00:58having no problem with any of those exports. Right now we're exporting about 15

01:02billion cubic feet per day. Projects currently under construction are going to double that to

01:0830 billion cubic feet per day. The projects that are permitted but not yet under construction will

01:14increase that almost another 15 to 41 billion cubic feet a day. I see you nodding because I

01:19got all this from DOE websites and the pause affects an additional 15 that would take us to

01:2866 billion cubic feet per day. So there is no question but that we are exporting a massive

01:32amount of natural gas and are going to export a massive amount more long before we ever get to

01:37this question about the pause. What I would like to understand and I'd like to have as much

01:44precision on these as you can, as the DOE under the Natural Gas Act fulfills your obligation to

01:52consider whether these additional projects are in the national interest, number one,

01:56are you treating climate change as a matter to be considered under the national interest?

02:01I mean, just yes or no, is that one of the factors?

02:03Yes.

02:04Okay. And will that consider both the methane emissions from leaks to other countries and the

02:11CO2 emissions associated with combustion?

02:12Yes, both.

02:14For the purposes of the methane combustion, what are you using for the global warming

02:18potential as you evaluate those impacts?

02:20So we'll look at the 20 year but also the 100 year and we'll make sure that we look at it a

02:24variety of different ways. And as you know, methane is a super pollutant when it comes to

02:28climate change and an area that we've spent a lot of time in this administration on the regulatory

02:33side but also on the funding side and the R&D side to get our act together to reduce those

02:38emissions as much as we possibly can. It's a big deal.

02:41I ask that because, you know, I think President Biden has appropriately said this is the

02:46decisive decade for climate and 100 year global warming potential is interesting but a rather

02:52academic question when we have a very narrow period of time to right the ship.

02:57And so I would hope you would take a more aggressive view as we're looking at those.

03:01Well, on the methane reduction side, we just came out with our MERP program, which is a

03:05terrible acronym, but it's a bunch of money focused on reducing methane emissions,

03:09complementary to what the EPA is doing. So this is a big, big deal.

03:13But of course, that doesn't affect like on the exports, we're going to other markets

03:16overseas. And so we have less degrees of freedom there, but it matters on the export.

03:21Well, and frankly, we have responsibility for those exports as well. Like just the fact

03:25that we're exporting and it's up to now about half of our production for natural gas is

03:30authorized to be exported.

03:33Understand. And I want to move on. I just want to make sure because the leak rates downstream

03:36in some of those countries are bigger. The Secretary Granholm in her response to QFRs

03:41said that the forward economic impacts on domestic prices were based on EIA estimates.

03:46My understanding is that EIA makes price forecasts based on a status quo regulatory

03:50environment. But this is asking the question, what would happen if the regulation changed?

03:55How do you square that circle for us?

03:57Yeah, so this is why we have several of our national labs involved to come at this from

04:00a variety of different ways. And right now, American consumers pay five to six times less

04:05than those and companies as well in Asia and Europe. So right now we have a and as

04:11we export more and more, what does that mean for American consumers in terms of what they

04:15pay? So we need to come at that with a variety of different modeling analysis and different

04:19assumptions.

04:20So I guess the gas industry is not going to like this, but we know that when the Freeport

04:23terminal shut down, the price of gas fell by 30 percent.

04:25It was remarkable how much it fell.

04:27So so we I think objectively, we know that the less we export at current production levels,

04:32the lower the prices are going to be for basic economics.

04:34And we're seeing a lot of experts who've looked at this. And this is one of the reasons

04:38to do the study and to make sure that we've got the good data to inform what our public

04:42interest.

04:42OK, last last question. Those statistics that I shared, 24 percent demand growth in the

04:46last decade. The U.S. economy has grown by over 50 percent in the same period of time.

04:52Oil use is flat. Coal use is down 40 percent. We have successfully managed to decouple economic

04:58growth from fossil fuel consumption for the benefit of our climate, for the benefit of

05:01consumers. As the U.S. as the DOE thinks about our national interest, is it in the

05:06United States national interest to export the technologies that have allowed us to decouple

05:11from fossil fuel use? Or is it in the U.S.'s national interest to export the fossil fuel

05:14we're decoupling from?

05:16So these are the clean energy technologies of the future. There's a remarkable competition

05:20going on right now. And we either step up with the kinds of incentives that are in the

05:24bill and the IRA and do everything we can to win those markets. And that's exactly what

05:28we're doing.

05:28OK, well, I would

05:29We've actually reduced our emissions in 2023 over 4 percent at the same time that we had

05:34one of the most robust GDP growths all around the world. So we are decoupling.

05:38True, but that's only if you don't include scope 3 emissions. We can't take credit for

05:42that while simultaneously exporting fossil fuel. And as we think about the national interest,

05:47I hope we'll think about making sure that the rest of the world won't take advantage

05:50of where we've gone. Yield back.

'We Are Having No Problem With Any Of Those Exports': Sean Casten Rebuffs GOP LNG Export Complaints

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