New export license does not solve problem to replacing Russian gas in Europe

Fuel Fix:

As pressure builds on the Obama administration to speed up approvals to sell U.S. natural gas overseas, the Energy Department on Monday authorized exports from a proposed Oregon terminal.

Although the Jordan Cove LNG Terminal in Coos Bay, Ore., is the sixth project to win a coveted license to export liquefied natural gas to countries that don’t have free-trade agreements with the United States, it would be the first new export project on the West Coast.

That would give Jordan Cove a major advantage supplying Asian countries eager for natural gas, but the Energy Department’s conditional approval is only the first step in a long process of financing and constructing the multibillion-dollar terminal.

Opposition building: Environmentalists challenge Obama on natural gas exports

The agency gave Jordan Cove permission to export as much as 800 million cubic feet per day of natural gas over the next two decades, marking the seventh such permit (spanning six projects).

Cumulatively, the licenses now mean as much as 9.3 billion cubic feet of American natural gas could be sent each day to non-free-trade partners. That’s near the upper bounds of potential natural gas export levels analyzed in a 2012 study conducted for the Energy Department that forms the basis for deciding whether each pending application is “consistent with the public interest.”

Kevin Book, managing director of the Washington, D.C.-based analysis firm ClearView Energy, said the level of LNG export approvals so far moves the United States into “superpower” territory, nudging close to Qatar’s 10.3 billion cubic feet of daily natural gas export capacity.
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The environmental opposition to export of gas is nonsensical.  It is part of their policy of creating artificial scarcity which only empowers despots like Putin.  What is really missing is a sense of urgency in approving exports to Europe to relieve those countries from their dependency on Russia.  What is so nonsensical about the opposition is that the same amount of fuel is going to be burned whether we export or not.  But the money goes into the pockets of our adversaries to push their expansionist aims instead of fueling investments in this country.  Someone needs to stand up to this strategic nonsense pushed by the environmental groups.