From Government Accountability & Oversight
by GAO Webadmin
The DoE’s court filings support the 2023 study’s claims that the buried, LNG “pauses” are based on lies
In a new court filing, after months of stalling and violating legal obligations and deadlines, the Biden-Harris Department of Energy, through attorneys at the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, released items that have been in the works for a year, including three. months in court, trying to remain anonymous.
Specifically, the DoE has “identified 97 potentially responsive documents totaling 4,354 pages” of records that match the following description:
1) any LNG export studies submitted by the National Energy Technology Laboratory to the Office of Fossil Energy between January 1, 2023 and October 31, 2023, and 2) an email transmitting documents from the National Energy Technology Labs (NETL) to, inter alia, the DoE’s Office of Fossil Energy.
This was the scope of the Freedom of Information Act request by the GAO, whose parameters were chosen on purpose, for the reason the GAO was included here. DoE admitted that the records exist not only after several months of stall tactics (below), but also repeated vague words in the first bid for this report to the court, avoiding the disclosure of this fact until pressured by GAO lawyers to admit the most answer this foundation. —have anything?
Furthermore, the DoE has been aware of this for six weeks and has refused to serve again, despite the deadlines imposed by law and the law:
The delay is not just bureaucratic sloth. In the FOIA court brought by the GAO, in order not to recognize this record, the DoE used a motion seeking an extension of time, a motion to stay the process, a motion to tie unrelated cases together causing more delays, and immediately refused to provide even court-ordered answers.
The admission that the DoE actually has a copy of the study on the export of liquefied natural gas strongly suggests that the administration has been telling the public false facts about the basic fact that “this crazy LNG is allowed to rest (a) the consequences. ) will be harmful to the industry for four to five years, but now it also carries national security implications.
Remember, the stated reason for this “pause” is that the DoE needs to conduct a macroeconomic study on the costs and benefits of LNG exports.
But we see that it has been done means, in a very short time, the basis on which it should be to “pause” LNG exports appears to be false, falsehood is a pretext for this latest gambit to implement the climate agenda “President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. , who have focus on limiting natural gas exports Environmentalists say increased gas exports could lead to more domestic drilling and, as a result, more emissions.
The decision to implement this “pause” caused consternation in the energy industry, among US allies … and among some others in the know. One of the people said that the DoE had conducted such an analysis, in 2023, but buried it because the conclusions did not support the policy of choosing to choke off the vast amount of US natural gas, often “fracked”. With less about gas (hello, gas stove of course they don’t want to ban that it’s a conspiracy theory akshully it’s good that heck yeah they definitely want to do that), opposition to fracking could be broken.
DoE conducts these studies regularly, The latest version (admission), DoE report 2018, runs 144 pages. The 2014 report is shorter, at 42 pages.
The DoE now acknowledges through counsel that the search yielded 97 documents / 4,354 pages. This is an average of 45 pages of documents (email threads will be shorter, of course). The most reasonable conclusion is that NETL submitted several versions of the rumored report during these ten months. Or, more simply: yes, it appears that the report that the DoE claims must be done before resuming LNG exports to non-FTA countries has been prepared and buried.
The DoE is clearly in no rush to provide more information to the public, as it has taken three months to state the basic answer: yes, the study exists.
Thesis Post: So far, the DoE has only responded to one of four requests made in early June, producing records in response to requests for “chat” logs for certain senior officials over a three-day period and including a January “break.”
It appears that the DoE and the White House are “on the same page” announcing a “pause” and a pretext. But the truth will come out, and this new statement is damning.
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