Note to Biden: The US can’t export renewable energy to our energy-deprived allies

Here’s a recent headline from the Wall Street Journal that you would never see under the progressives’ Green New Deal: “American Gas to Europe’s Rescue: LNG export terminals are loading tankers with fuel destined for countries threatened by Putin’s energy extortion.” 

The reason the United States can come to the European Union’s (EU) energy rescue is that U.S.-produced natural gas can be loaded on tankers and shipped to our oversees allies.  

Those shipments will become even more important if (or more likely, when) Russian President Vladimir Putin, responding to U.S. and EU sanctions after he invades Ukraine, reduces or cuts off natural gas shipments to the EU. Europe currently gets up to 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia.

By contrast, renewable energy – primarily from wind turbines and solar panels – cannot be loaded on tankers and shipped overseas to be used by other countries.

Fortunately, the U.S. can export large quantities of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to help our friends and allies. In fact, the U.S. was the world’s top LNG exporter in December and January, surpassing the two other leading LNG exporting countries: Qatar and Australia. 

As Bloomberg News explains, “Europe, which is facing low winter inventories and high natural gas prices due to tensions between Russia and Ukraine, was a top destination for U.S. cargoes last month [i.e., January].”

Crises like the Russian invasion threat to Ukraine have a way of focusing our political leaders’ attention on what’s important — even energy hypocrites like President Biden.

Last fall, Biden was encouraging major oil-producing countries to crank out more oil in the hope of reducing high gasoline prices — high prices that can quickly anger voters and undermine politicians’ hopes for reelection. Even Biden had to acknowledge, “On the surface, it seems like an irony.”

And he hasn’t limited that encouragement just to countries. U.S. officials recently held talks with international energy companies to see if they could increase their natural gas production if Putin invades Ukraine or if Russian gas pipelines just happen to need maintenance that requires shutting them down during winter.

Bizarrely, in the middle of all this international energy turmoil, the Biden administration is looking to impose more regulations and restrictions on natural gas pipelines. According to E&E News, “The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued sweeping new guidance … for assessing proposed natural gas pipelines, adding new considerations for landowners, environmental justice communities and other factors.” 

How does Biden think natural gas gets to the LNG terminals on the U.S. coast, where it’s cooled to -260° Fahrenheit for shipping?

And while access to alternative sources for natural gas is critical for Europe, especially with a roaring Russian bear going rogue, our allies also need access to oil. Ukrainian tanks, troop carriers and jets don’t run on renewable energy — and there’s no place to plug them in in a war zone if they did. 

Fortunately, the United States has become by far the world’s largest oil producer (at least pre-pandemic). So, we can be a blessing to our allies in that regard also, if the Biden administration doesn’t stand in the way — again.

Team Biden wants to increase how it calculates the cost of releasing carbon in the atmosphere, a process that would make it more expensive to produce fossil fuels. A federal judge halted the Biden effort, and so, according to the New York Times, the “Biden administration is indefinitely freezing decisions about new federal oil and gas drilling…”

Green New Dealers might respond that when the United States transitions to mostly or totally renewable energy-generated electricity, U.S. fossil fuel companies, having shuttered many if not most of their well sites, can just crank them up again when our allies need us to come to the rescue. 

But it’s expensive to shutter wells and it’s expensive to start them up again. And no energy company is going to do that if that increased demand is only around for a short time. 

The best way to ensure that U.S. wells are producing and that oil and natural gas are available at home or abroad at reasonable prices is if there is a sustained, robust international demand for energy. Not only does our economy depend on it, our, and our allies’, national security depends on it. 

Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @MerrillMatthews.