Guest “You don’t have any LNG to promise to anyone” by David Middleton

“Saturday’s Energy Absurdity of the Day”

Given that industry was already expanding capacity over the next few years, Biden simply promised to deliver the results of someone else’s work, kind of like his college term papers.

Since most LNG shipments are part of long-term contracts, the facilities are currently operating at full capacity and with the largest exporter being “sold out” into the 2040’s, there’s very little excess LNG to deliver to Europe…

Cheniere Energy Inc., the largest U.S. liquefied natural gas exporter, has sold out through the 2040s of the planned production from the $7 billion expansion of its Corpus Christi plant, the company’s CEO Jack Fusco said.

Bloomberg

The three Democrat hacks on the FERC have placed a new roadblock to future expansion, beyond what’s already in the works…

FERC issues ‘historic’ overhaul of pipeline approvals
By Miranda Willson | 02/18/2022 07:24 AM EST

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued sweeping new guidance yesterday for natural gas projects, including a first-ever climate change threshold, upending decades of precedent for how major energy infrastructure is approved.

FERC updated a 23-year-old policy for assessing proposed natural gas pipelines, adding new considerations for landowners, environmental justice communities and other factors. In a separate but related decision, the commission also laid out a framework for evaluating projects’ greenhouse gas emissions.

The commission’s three Democratic members approved both policies, while the two Republicans on the panel opposed them.

[…]

“We are going to, however, apply this policy in the interim, to allow the commission to process pipeline and LNG applications without delay,” Glick said.

Contrary to Democratic commissioners’ claims that it will provide greater certainty for the gas industry, the interim policy “creates more questions” for gas developers, said Amy Andryszak, president and CEO of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America. For example, the statement does not explain the extent to which mitigation will be required for developers, she said.

[…]

E&E News

While they will “apply this policy in the interim, to allow the commission to process pipeline and LNG applications without delay,” future expansion of LNG capacity will be rather difficult, unless voters fire Democrats en masse in 2022 and 2024. The word interim does actually have a definition.

Note: The articles use the phrase “billion cubic meters,” (Bcm). This phrase if generally not used in the US oil & gas industry (the only one that matters). We use billion cubic feet (Bcf).

• 1 Bcm = 35.3 Bcf
• Total US export capacity is expected to reach 14 Bcf/d in 2022.
• The 50 Bcm/yr promised to Europe by 2030 = 1,765 Bcf/yr.
• 1,765 Bcf/yr = 4.8 Bcf/d.
• In 2021, US LNG companies exported an average of 2.5 Bcf/d to Europe.
• The odds are they’ll be shipping more than 5 Bcf/d to Europe in 2030.

Biden promised to deliver something he doesn’t control and was probably going to happen anyway. I’d call him a worthless sack of schist, but that would be unfair to fecal matter.