ICYMI: Advocates: Americans Should Prepare for Higher Bills & More Pollution as Trump’s DOE Buries Truth to Expedite More LNG Exports
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 20, 2025
Contact: grace@team-arc.com
NATIONWIDE — Today, President Trump and gas industry CEO, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, released a response to over 100,000 comments submitted on the Department of Energy’s final studies on LNG exports released in December 2024. Titled Energy, Economic, and Environmental Assessment of U.S. LNG Exports, this assessment was a landmark analysis of the risks of unfettered LNG exports that followed in the footsteps of the Biden administration’s decision to pause new export authorizations in January of 2024.
The Trump administration has already begun greenlighting new LNG projects in spite of public opposition. With today’s release, they have also ignored the warnings of the 2024 analysis, which concluded:
- There are enough LNG exports already approved to meet global demand for decades to come;
- Unfettered exports of LNG will increase wholesale domestic natural gas prices by over 30 percent;
- LNG facilities tend to be concentrated in communities overburdened with petrochemical pollution;
- Increasing LNG exports threatens our ability to meet our global commitment of limiting warming to 1.5ºC and would displace more renewables than coal globally.
During the public comment period on this analysis, which lasted from January to April of 2025, Veterans, economic experts, more than 150 frontline and national organizations, members of Congress, and more than 156,000 Americans, all urged the Trump administration to reconsider the approval of more LNG exports, highlighting the harms they would have on frontline communities, the climate, and energy costs.
Instead of listening to that broad array of voices, the DOE’s new response ignores the facts on record to make a case for expediting LNG exports in spite of their dramatic costs.
LNG exports in the United States have rapidly increased in recent years, harming public health, devastating the environment, raising prices for families, and threatening national security. Peer-reviewed research indicates that the climate impact of LNG is even greater than coal. Nevertheless, the oil and gas industry is seeking to build on its record profits by rapidly increasing the US’s LNG export capacity – even as demand drops in Europe and security concerns rise around exports via China.
In response, advocacy leaders issued the following statements:
NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) Senior Attorney Caroline Reiser: “The facts are clear – expanding U.S. LNG exports benefits billionaire oil executives, not the American public. Greenlighting reckless LNG extraction and exportation will raise domestic energy prices, pollute American communities, and fuel the global climate crisis.”
Sierra Club Beyond Fossil Fuels Policy Director Mahyar Sorour: “The studies released under the Biden administration clearly showed what we already knew about the harms of LNG exports. This response from the Trump administration follows the closing of a public comment period in which the fossil fuel industry has attempted to re-write the critical, unbiased findings from the original report. No matter how hard they try to hide it, Trump’s DOE can not bury the truth that increased LNG exports are simply not in the public interest. The facts are clear, LNG exports raise costs to Americans’ energy bills, are disastrous for frontline communities, increase public health harms, and perpetuate the climate crisis. Big Oil and Gas CEOs are the only beneficiaries of a rubberstamp for LNG projects.”
Friends of the Earth U.S. Senior Energy Campaigner Raena Garcia: “The Biden Administration’s Department of Energy study confirmed that the Trump Administration’s agenda to supercharge LNG exports will come at the expense of consumers and the climate. We cannot afford to ignore these findings and haphazardly greenlight LNG exports to prop up an industry that continues to threaten our people and the planet for profit. Glossing over the concerns that a hundred thousand people have, including scientists, policy experts, activists and concerned citizens, is not in the public’s best interest.”
WE ACT for Environmental Justice Director of Federal Policy Anastasia Gordon: “It is more important than ever that we acknowledge the facts of the 2024 study: LNG exports add costs to people across the U.S. already struggling with energy bills, and continue to disproportionately pollute communities of color and lower-income. LNG expansion is not in the public interest. The Trump administration’s Department of Energy’s attempt to rewrite reality and neglect hundreds of thousands of public comments in opposition to LNG does not conceal the truth. Creating further excessive pollution and cost burden while also growing unhealthy industries that fuel unnatural disasters in our communities is a violation of our rights to protect our health, our families, and our future.”
Public Citizen’s Energy Program Director Tyson Slocum: “The Department of Energy’s December 2024 exhaustive study documenting that expanding LNG exports will expose American families to higher energy price burdens remains intact, as Trump has failed to effectively challenge the facts. And Trump’s sloppy effort to rush through more fossil fuel infrastructure by declaring a national energy emergency on Day 1 of his presidency has backfired, as Trump’s emergency order claiming domestic energy shortages means that his Department of Energy cannot approve additional LNG exports.”
Center for Biological Diversity Attorney Lauren Parker: “The Trump administration and the LNG industry are rewriting the narrative to make the rich richer while people keep struggling to pay their energy bills. It’s another disgusting example of Trump throwing people under the bus. Last year’s DOE study concluded that LNG exports hurt Americans’ wallets and the climate, and that’s truer today than ever.”
Food and Water Watch Policy Advocate Drew Guillory: “Trump’s LNG export giveaways are a straight-line attack on the American people, raising domestic energy prices and polluting our frontline communities — only for the sake of fossil fuel corporations’ profit margins. This administration is bought and paid for by polluters, and Americans are paying the price.”
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