Several hundred environmental and advocacy groups are pushing the Biden administration to go beyond the Department of Energy’s pause on new liquefied natural gas export permits, according to a letter shared with E&E News.
The groups cheered President Joe Biden’s decision in January to freeze LNG export approvals to non-free-trade-agreement countries. But they’re arguing now that he should widen the pause to “include stopping all LNG and related fossil fuel infrastructure permits across all U.S. federal agencies.”
That would include infrastructure that “specifically facilitates the transport and/or export” of LNG, according to Seth Gladstone, a spokesperson for Food & Water Watch, one of the organizations behind the letter to Biden. Other signatories on the letter — which is being sent to the White House on Thursday — include the Center for Biological Diversity, Oil Change International, Earthworks and 350.org.
“Any new development of LNG and associated infrastructure is antithetical to your recognition of climate change as an existential threat to all of us, and your commitment to environmental justice,” the groups said in the letter.
