Feds snub LNG export hub standards request from environmental groups

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The U.S. Department of Energy this week denied the request from several environmental advocacy groups demanding the agency issue regulations that more clearly define whether proposed liquified natural gas export facilities respect the well-being of the general public.

The Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, Environmental America and Friends of the Earth in a joint news release called the federal environmental agency out for refusing to show the public how it makes decisions that could not only have negative impacts on climate and neglecting to account for the harm new export facilities will have on many communities that have already been overburden by pollution from the fossil fuel industry.

The groups had been locked in a 10-year legal fight with the Department of Energy, which claimed it uses rigorous standards to approve gas export facilities but failed to lay out what those standards are, according to the news release.

“After 10 long years reviewing this petition, the department concludes that it knows best and the public should blindly follow its lead,” Lauren Parker, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said in a prepared statement. “With every fossil fuel project approval, DOE is rubber stamping the way to climate destruction and the public deserves to know about it.”

More than 50 LNG projects have been approved by the DOE, half of which are located in parts of Louisiana.

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