As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non-proliferation and Trade, I issued the following statement on H.R. 2471, the “Expedite our Economy Act of 2013,” which would remove the Department of Energy from the LNG export permitting process.
A 1938 law requires any company that seeks to export natural gas to first get approval from the Department of Energy (DOE) before getting separate approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Over the last 70 years, this bureaucratic hurdle was hardly noticed because the U.S. did not have the capability to mass export natural gas. That is no longer true. Technology has changed it all, and the amount of recoverable natural gas in our country has skyrocketed. There are some 18 export applications now