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Advisers urge patience to avoid legal challenges

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Biden's LNG moratorium delayed key projects

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Trump's team considers extending comment period on LNG

study

By Jarrett Renshaw, Timothy Gardner

Jan 7 (Reuters) - Advisers to U.S. President-elect

Donald Trump are urging him to take a patient approach to

restarting approvals for liquefied natural gas export licenses,

fearing rapid approvals will only get overturned in court,

according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

The recommendations offer a preview of the challenges Trump

will face as his bold campaign promises to slash regulation and

unfetter industry crash into the reality of governing an

unwieldy bureaucracy.

In an election-year move, current President Joe Biden halted new

LNG export licenses and ordered his administration to conduct a

review of the U.S. LNG industry last January after pressure from

environmentalists concerned about greenhouse gas emissions.

The moratorium delayed projects including Venture Global's CP2

project, the Commonwealth LNG plant, and Energy Transfer's ( ET )

Lake Charles complex, all in Louisiana.

Trump vowed on the presidential campaign trail to undo Biden's

pause and swiftly approve the projects awaiting an LNG export

license.

He plans on issuing an LNG-specific executive order on his

first day in office later this month, but the details of the

order remain a matter of debate, as advisers balance political

urgency with protecting the export projects from protracted

legal battles, the sources told Reuters.

The Biden administration's study on LNG was released in December

and found that unconstrained LNG exports could exacerbate

climate change if the supplies replace lower carbon energy

sources instead of coal in the places where it is shipped. The

U.S. became the world's largest LNG exporter in 2023, as

companies sought to help Europe break its dependence on Russian

energy following the invasion of Ukraine.

The findings are supposed to help guide future

decision-making around approving new projects and can be used by

environmental groups to challenge new approvals.

Instead of ignoring the study, advisers are urging Trump to take

it head-on, using a public comment period to discredit some of

its key findings and argue that previous studies on LNG should

take priority.

The comment period for the Biden study ends on Feb. 18.

Trump's advisers are even considering the merits of extending

the deadline to allow for more time to challenge the study and

thwart any potential lawsuits when they approve the pending

export permits.

Fred Hutchison, president and CEO of LNG Allies, an industry

advocacy group, added that any such recommendations to Trump

would "largely track what the companies that have been caught up

in the Biden administration's pause on LNG prefer."

"The industry wants to see a balance struck between

durability of approvals in the courts and speed of those

approvals," he said.

The Trump transition team did not comment on whether they

are considering a more deliberate approach to the LNG issue.

"Voters re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin

giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the

campaign trail, including lowering energy costs for consumers,"

said Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.