Today on February 25, 2022, LNG Allies was joined by the Energy Policy Research Foundation, American Exploration and Production Council, and the Energy Equipment & Infrastructure Alliance in a letter addressed to the Biden Administration expressing increasing concerns on U.S. and European Energy Security. A brief summary of the suggestions in the letter is below:
- Publicly signal support for domestic natural gas and oil production.
- Set up a joint EU-U.S. Emergency Energy Infrastructure Council to have new “virtual transatlantic gas pipelines” in place as soon as possible.
- Instruct DOE Fossil Energy and Carbon Management Office to immediately approve the U.S. LNG export applications pending before it to export gas from the United States to America’s willing partners and allies around the globe with an urgent focus on the applications that have already been approved by FERC.
- Ask FERC to act within six months on all pending U.S. LNG export facility and gas pipeline applications needed to move more natural gas to domestic customers and LNG export terminals.
- Immediately release the $300 million in funding that the U.S. promised in 2020 to the Three Seas Initiative Investment Fund to build critical natural gas and other energy infrastructure along the North-South corridor in Central and Eastern Europe.
https://lngallies.com/energysecurity/
On Wednesday, February 16 2022, EPRINC President Lucian Pugliaresi testified before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works at a hearing called “The Environmental Protection Agency’s Renewable Fuel Standard Program: Challenges and Opportunities.” Lou was joined by Cory-Ann Wind from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Emily Skor from Growth Energy, and LeAnn Johnson Koch from Perkins Cole, LLP. Lou’s testimony was later extensively quoted by Politico’s E&E News (link is behind a paywall), and one of the highlights of these quotes was:
“The principal drawbacks and risk factors of the program are not the use of biofuels as blendstock for gasoline and diesel fuel, but the statutory mandate which requires ever-larger blending volumes without regard to market conditions, costs or technical constraints,” Pugliaresi said. “Price risks to consumers from higher transportation fuel costs rise substantially as mandates push biofuel blending above 10 percent of the gasoline pool.”
The link to the full video of the event and each testimony is here, and Lou’s testimony can be found here.
As 2021 draws to a close and 2022 is approaching, Season’s Greetings from EPRINC!
The International Energy Agency (IEA), a collection of member countries formed in the 1970s to secure the energy security of the advanced Western democracies, is now calling for a halt to the development of new oil and gas resources as a fundamental strategy for addressing the threats from climate change. The halt in development is viewed by the IEA as essential for the world to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Michael Lynch, Distinguished Fellow at the Energy Policy Research Foundation, Inc. (EPRINC) points out the risks of such a strategy in his paper entitled Shifting Oil Industry Structure and Energy Security Under Investment Phase-Outs. Since only private oil companies in the West are likely to respond, future oil supply probably would be dominated by Middle Eastern and Russian oil companies, mostly state-owned. Such a policy initiative, if successfully implemented, will see OPEC and allied producers (OPEC+) share of the world oil market supply rise to over 80% by 2040, degrading global energy security and severely limited the capability of the IEA to implement its Emergency Sharing System in the case of an oil crisis. The publication can be found here.