RHETORIC VS REALITY: Biden’s Commitment For US LNG To Supply Europe Faces Strong Headwinds.

While committing the US to help Germany and other European nations wean themselves off of Russian natural gas seems to be a noble goal, there is just one problem: The President apparently didn’t talk the US LNG industry about it before he made the agreement. Reading the quotes from executives at Tellurian in the New York Times article linked here, it is apparent that they were caught off-guard by the President’s announcement. “I have no idea how they are going to do this, but I don’t want to criticize them, because for the first time they are trying to do the right thing,” said Charif Souki, the Times quotes executive chairman of Tellurian as saying.

Like every other industry in the United States, U.S. LNG is a private enterprise made up of an array of competing companies that operate in a capitalist, free market system. Given that reality, we are left to wonder how the President and his senior advisors plan to go about ensuring that the US meets the promises the President made in the agreement with the European Union? Does he plan to order his regulators to streamline permitting processes? Does he plan to somehow order banks and ESG investor groups to stop denying capital to companies in the industry, capital needed to fund their $10 billion LNG export facilities?

No, Biden planned to say something that would play well on TV.