For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been able to write some pretty cheery posts about the state of the US liquid natural gas (LNG) industry. How things have been looking up in the post-POTATUS pause era, and how the US has surged back into a global leadership role.
…The November 5th election sounded the death knell for the LNG pause.
How soon could they get things ramped back up? How soon could they get the LNG processing plants that had been planned but put on hold because of it cranking?
They went into overdrive.
This is all part and parcel of President Trump’s plans to revitalize the country’s energy sector, reestablish American energy independence, and assert our dominance on the international stage.
…But it’s better to be the lead dog…
Ripping up old alliances and turning the post-World War II axis on its head would have been impossible for any previous American president because of the insatiable US thirst for imported energy. But the Trump White House is able to lean on an increasingly critical made-in-America commodity to exert new levels of geopolitical leverage: liquefied natural gas.
The US, which in the span of about seven years transformed itself from an irrelevant supplier of LNG into the world’s largest, is set to expand its production capacity by 60% in the first half of Donald Trump’s second presidency, according to an estimate from BloombergNEF. By the end of the decade, almost 1 in every 3 tankers carrying the superchilled fuel will originate in the US, giving Trump his best chance to attain the energy dominance his campaign promised.
… then tied at the end of the sled team.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright is US energy’s booster-in-chief, and he seems to be everywhere these days, cheering the energy sector on while touting the gains already made.
Wright even made an appearance the other night at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo as part of his barnstorming tour, lamenting he couldn’t get his hat and boots sent out from D.C. in time to wear them to the event. Probably had to buy a whole new rig and break it in.
…Wright made his way to the rodeo after an action-packed day one at the CERAWeek energy conference, where he delivered a punchy keynote speech laying out the Trump administration’s approach to energy policy and otherwise kept busy with meetings through the day. Wright attended the rodeo to demonstrate to everyday Americans that they are his priority as he pursues the energy dominance agenda alongside President Donald Trump, he explained to the DCNF.
“Look, rodeos are central to rural American culture. The center of the country, not our coastal culture,” Wright told the DCNF. “And this is the prime constituency of the president. This is the crowd I think is most anxious to see common sense return to government in the United States.”
One of Wright’s top tasks in his new gig will be attacking surging electricity costs driven in large part by the Biden administration’s aggressive regulation of reliable, inexpensive energy generation and subsidy deluge to boost intermittent green power sources. A 2024 analysis of Census Bureau data conducted by Lending Tree estimated that about 34% of Americans aged 18 or older had to pull back their spending or skimp on other necessary expenses to be able to pay their electricity bills at some point over the preceding 12 months; eight of the 11 states with the highest percentages recorded are located in the South.
“We’ve had over 20% price rise average in electricity prices in the United States over the Biden administration, with very little demand growth, only about 2% cumulative demand growth,” Wright told the DCNF. “Now we have rapid demand growth, and that course we were on is a train wreck.”
It was amazing to spend an evening with fellow Americans at the @RodeoHouston — the largest livestock and rodeo in the world, the epicenter of American grit and patriotism! pic.twitter.com/lwYeNRAyd1
— Secretary Chris Wright (@SecretaryWright) March 11, 2025
Wright made the point that the Trump administration’s energy policy wasn’t about scoring partisan points. It is all about facilitating prosperity through affordable energy.
… One of the guiding principles of Wright’s philosophy is that affordable energy is a vital economic resource and, accordingly, one of the essential ingredients for human flourishing.
So the Department of Energy already seems to be running at full speed into the future, where some of the other bureaus in the government have some intransigence baked in that has to be rooted out. Like, some elements who are philosophically opposed to the Trump administration and, even though required to perform as bidden by their duly elected bosses, will drag their feet or actively work to subvert the directed action.
Ebola’s use of the phrase ‘malicious compliance’ springs to mind.
Think of the denizens of USAID, FEMA or the EPA. Those kind of departments are packed with ideologues from the basement to the top loft.
But being the leviathan the government is, no department really acts alone – it’s always somehow in concert with some other department, even if indirectly. However, they are all supposed to be singing off the same sheet of music and working towards the same end.
At the end of February, the Wall Street Journal had an op-ed discussing an entity that apparently hadn’t gotten the message – the U.S. Export-Import Bank (ExIm). The ExIm Bank was fixin’ to finish up the paperwork approval to underwrite financing a multi-billion dollar LNG export facility in Africa.
WSJ points out that the ExIm seemed to have missed the memo that the US was now putting a priority on our own LNG production and sales and that this facility would be a direct competitor.
Why were we getting ready to pay for it?
Hard to believe, but the U.S. Export-Import Bank may underwrite a foreign-backed liquefied natural gas export project in Africa that would compete with American fuel shipments. Talk about an agency in need of the DOGE treatment.
The ExIm Bank’s putative purpose is to finance purchases of U.S. exports and make American products more globally competitive. In practice, the agency finances investments by big businesses that primarily benefit foreign companies and governments, much like the U.S. Agency for International Development.
France’s TotalEnergies’ Mozambique LNG export project is an example. Mozambique boasts large natural gas reserves off its coasts, but the East African country suffers from conflict and instability, which has spooked private investors. Total wants the U.S. and other governments to finance its $20 billion LNG project to reduce its risk.
The ExIm Bank approved a $4.7 billion loan for the project in 2020 on the rationale that China and Russia might otherwise finance the deal. But this justification strays from the agency’s stated mission.
Attacks by Islamic militants in the region prompted TotalEnergies to pause the project in 2021. Biden officials never finalized funding, but TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne recently said he expects the Trump team to do so soon. “Security has improved, but it will never be perfect,” he noted. Not perfect? Islamic State militants are rampaging across the region.
So, the US agreed to finance a French Mozambique LNG export project to reduce the risk profile in order to entice private investors ‘spooked’ by Islamic militants rampaging across the country?
WHUT
According to the WSJ, TotalEnergies seems very much like your stereotypical rapacious international operator.
…Unlike other Western energy giants, TotalEnergies didn’t withdraw from Russia after the Ukraine invasion. It still owns large stakes in three major Russian LNG export projects. TotalEnergies last year also signed “a strategic cooperation agreement to deepen their collaboration” with state-owned China Petroleum and Chemical Cooperation.
TotalEnergies seems to be leveraging its partnerships with Russia and China to argue that the U.S. should finance its Mozambique project to counter those U.S. adversaries in Africa. The Biden ExIm leaders invoked a similar rationale to approve a $1.6 billion loan guarantee for a solar and battery storage project in Angola, among other wasteful projects.
POTATUS loved those sorts of scumbags and hamstrung US companies from competing on an equal footing, so, of course, he could sign away billions to protect malignant foreign interests. God knows what kickbacks Biden and/or his puppet thugs got for inking these deals – that has to be said.
The proposal for ExIm bank to send nearly $5 BILLION taxpayer dollars to fund a foreign backed LNG project which would directly compete with our US LNG industry runs completely counter to @Realdonaldtrump America First energy agenda. https://t.co/Xyv1YjnSYM
— Rick Perry (@GovernorPerry) March 13, 2025
HOLD ON THERE
With everything going on, I guess this slipped through the cracks because Rick Perry, Trump’s Energy Secretary from his first term, was sounding the alarm about a vote on the $5B package scheduled for today.
The U.S. Export-Import bank is slated to vote Thursday on a nearly $5 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project in Africa that is vehemently opposed by U.S. oil and gas industry leaders, including President Donald Trump’s own former energy secretary.
…”I’m not sure what the strategy is” with the project, Perry told Fox News Digital in an interview. “I just think it’s counter to the president’s ‘America first’ agenda,” which focuses heavily on unleashing oil and gas production, including LNG exports.
Industry concerns reached a fever pitch this week ahead of a scheduled ExIm board vote Thursday morning on whether to underwrite the roughly $4.7 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project that France’s TotalEnergies is pursuing in Mozambique, off the East Coast of Africa.
Experts said the French terminal would compete ‘molecule for molecule’ with American LNG and make the Alaskan projects everyone is so excited about damn near impossible to get off the ground as they both are targeted at same markets.
There’s also literally an apparent problem with the ExIm’s investment priorities.
…So, why would the bank vote to undercut Trump’s policies? Industry officials and former administration officials noted that ExIm’s current investment policies do not currently prioritize supporting U.S. demand-side infrastructure – an effort that has sparked reform efforts in Trump’s first term.
“If we want to sell American products into those countries, then let’s have that conversation. But when we have this extraordinary resource, it’s a national security issue as well as an economic issue,” Perry said.
“This facility that we’re talking about is in direct competition with the Alaska moving gas from the North Slope of Alaska southwards inlet, fractionating it and exporting it to the same markets,” he added.
Perry, who previously served as governor of Texas and graduated from Texas A&M, quipped that the ExIm bank’s approval of funding for the Mozambique LNG project would be akin to “the Aggies giving money to the University of Texas [at Austin]” to support their football program, referencing the decades-long rivalry between the two Texas schools.
I’m not an international governmental investment guru – I only play one here at HotAir – but it sounds to me like priorities need to be redirected and stat.
Trump needs to be quick and perfectly clear, as the ExIm seems to enjoy being off doing their own thing.
Rick Perry has faith.
“I think as soon as the president gets wind of this, he will put a stop to it,” Perry said.
Someone had just better make sure Trump gets ‘wind of it.’
