Sixteen Republican attorneys general, including Oklahoma AG Gentner Drummond, filed suit against the Biden adminstration over the President’s freeze on federal permits for new LNG exports.
Led by Texas and Louisiana, the states are demanding that the Energy Department reverse its ban announced in January.
“This ban disregards statutory mandates, flouts the normal regulatory process, upends the industry, disrupts Plaintiffs’ economies, and subverts our constitutional structure,” the suit reads. “These unlawful actions leave Plaintiffs with no choice but to once more turn to the courts to enforce the law.”
The lawsuit stated in its introduction.
“President Biden began his presidency by issuing an unlawful moratorium on offshore and onshore oil-and-gas leasing. Louisiana v. Biden, 622 F. Supp. 3d 267 (W.D. La. 2022). Almost three years to the day later, his administration followed the same playbook to unlawfully ban new liquified natural gas (LNG) exports.”
The attorneys general stated that even the Biden administration’s own Energy Department months ago declared such a ban as unlawful when it denied an environmental coalition’s petition to stop granting more LNG export licenses.
“Now—in the midst of an election year, and after a sustained pressure campaign from billionaire conglomerates, celebrities, “influencers,” and banks—the Biden Administration acts as if
its July 2023 Decision does not exist. The Administration likewise ignores the Natural Gas Act’s presumption in favor of exports, decades of agency policy, and State and private reliance on exports.”
