Vice Ranking Member Stansbury’s Opening Statement at Subcommittee Hearing on Liquified Natural Gas Exports
December 4, 2024
Washington, D.C. (December 4, 2024), Below is Vice Ranking Member Melanie Stansbury's opening statement at today's Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs hearing on liquified natural gas (LNG) exports.
Opening Statement
Vice Ranking Member Melanie Stansbury
Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs
Hearing on "Exposing the Truth on LNG: How the Administration Played Politics
with America's Energy Future"
December 4, 2024
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our Assistant Secretary for being here with us today. As was mentioned, this is a rehash of a topic that we've already covered in this subcommittee, and in fact, we've already had two hearings on gas stoves, two hearings on how the government has forced electric vehicles, and now a second hearing on this one-year pause reviewing applications for LNG exports.
This is a politically manufactured non-issue. This is actually not a ban. This is about using the best available economic analysis and science to understand how LNG exports affect American consumer markets, how they affect the price of oil and gas here in the United States, how they affect prices for consumers here in the United States and in light of supply and demand issues, especially with foreign wars, with constraints on gas exports and other countries, and other impacts, including climate change and social justice and environmental impacts, what the implications are for expanding our capacity.
I think any good business would want a good sound economic analysis. And if the United States is a business, as we know it is, it's in the business of making sure that the American taxpayers get a good return on any investment that we make or any sale that we get from American resources, then it is behoove us to do our due diligence to make sure that the energy that is being produced here in the United States, the infrastructure that the United States is investing in, and the places in which that infrastructure goes, does not have an undue impact on our economy, on American families, on oil and gas prices, and on the environment and the global climate crisis. And that's really what this all comes down to.
This is about modernizing and understanding the state of play, especially after we've come out of a historic pandemic and global disturbances in international gas markets and to understand what's going on, which seems pretty reasonable, but oftentimes, you know, in this committee, things get spun in a way that sounds like there's some vast conspiracy theory. And I think it's important to just be real with the American people.
You know, we are literally two weeks out from adjourning for the holidays. On January 20th, we'll have a new Administration. They've made very clear, it was just stated in the opening statement, that their intention is to vastly expand LNG exports. And that has nothing to do with American energy security; that has everything to do with expanding opportunities to sell American oil and gas overseas so that American companies can profit from the pumping that they're doing here in the United States.
We are energy secure, and in fact, as somebody who also comes from an oil and gas state, we have amongst the highest oil and gas pumping that we've ever seen in American history right now, in fact, just in our backyard. So, this is not about energy security.
And you know, before I came to Congress, I was actually a staffer on the Senate Energy Committee. And I marveled often as a staffer when we would see these industry-led hearings come before the committee, and you always wonder what are the conversations that were had with industry before they decided to hold hearings like this, because it's clearly in the service of creating a congressional record so that when the Trump Administration comes in, there's some legal and possibly congressional teeth to whatever fight these private companies are hoping to take on.
So, I think it's important to be clear-eyed about what this hearing actually is and pull back the curtain a little bit, and to also be clear about what it is that we're actually talking about. This is not a ban. The Department of Energy is updating their data and analysis, working with experts from our national laboratories, and it's an important part of the process for looking at additional permit applications, and this is just part of doing business and being a responsible business. And so, this is a bit of a witch hunt, especially in the final days of this Congress and of the Administration.
I think it's really important that we have the Assistant Secretary here today to talk about what the Biden Administration has done to address American energy security, and in fact, we have amongst the highest energy security we've ever had in American history. And you know, prices are going down, manufacturing is going up. Jobs are going up and we're having a renaissance here in the United States in domestic production and manufacturing.
I think it would be a dang shame to see it get dismantled in the coming months because we know that it's stimulating economic opportunity. It's creating thousands of jobs. It's helping millions of Americans. It's bringing down costs, and this is really about trying to pump up profits for private corporations, not about caring for the people of this country.
I look forward to hearing from the Assistant Secretary. I applaud the Department of Energy's efforts to create a fact-based policy document that we can use to help plan for our industry exports and to understand the economic and environmental implications of what we do as we are, as a country, figuring out how we want to handle this industry and its implications.
With that, I yield back.
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Subcommittees
Issues:
Energy & Environment