Reuters: Politics: Lawmakers urge Obama admin to approve natural gas exports

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Lawmakers urge Obama admin to approve natural gas exports Aug 7th 2012, 16:25 WASHINGTON | Tue Aug 7, 2012 12:25pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday ratcheted up pressure on the Obama administration to speed approval for companies to export natural gas arguing it would help relieve a glut that has dampened output of the fuel. The approval process at the Department of Energy, "does not seem to have a set timeline for decisions or a sense of urgency," Representatives Gene Green, a Texas Democrat, and James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, said in a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu. "Our region and our country need an outlet for natural gas production," Green and Lankford said in a letter signed by 44 House lawmakers from Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas, 10 of which were Democrats. The U.S. natural gas surplus "has produced very low prices for producers and an absence of market opportunities for natural gas, leading many wells to be shut in," the letter said. It was the second real push from Capitol Hill in support of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, exports after a group of lawmakers from states rich in shale gas wrote Chu in late June. A U.S. natural gas revolution spurred by wide development of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, directional drilling and other technologies has brought with it a push to build export terminals to send the fuel to markets in Asia and Europe where prices for gas are far higher. The Energy Department has only approved full export rights for one project, Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass, terminal. The department said it would wait on the results from a study of the economic implications of exports before acting on eight other applications from Dominion Resources and other companies. The delay has given presumed Republican candidate for president Mitt Romney's campaign some fodder to criticize the Obama administration for the delay. Critics of gas exports say approving exports could significantly raise fuel prices and costs for U.S. home owners and gas-dependent businesses. Amid a rosy outlook for U.S. natural gas prices, the chemical industry, for instance, has begun to announce plans to build plants again in the country. Green and the other lawmakers wrote that each of the ports will require thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investments. But the investments "cannot be made or fully supported without predictable timelines for decision making by the Department," the letter said. The Energy Department did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday. It has said the study on economics of exports would be released in late summer, and decisions on the ports would follow a public comment period. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Marguerita Choy) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

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