Obama administration drags feet on authorizing LNG/coal exports

Mentioned in the the Pearl Harbor thread comments is how Japanese aggression was driven by natural resource constraints.

This Idealabs piece shows how its starting to happen again with US procedural foot dragging in getting LNG and coal exports to Asia permitted in a prompt manner as is required by WTO rules. Rules the US was a strong proponent of.

U.S. government delays in approving pending natural gas and coal export proposals “are likely to violate” global trade rules, according to a report released this week by the National Association of Manufacturers.

The NAM commissioned former Democratic Congressman and World Trade Organization (WTO) judge James Bacchus to write the report, which urges the federal government to speed up the export approval process and lift regulatory barriers...

...“The United States has always been a strong advocate of these rules and has been forceful in challenging export restrictions imposed by other countries,” Bacchus writes, warning that if the export delays aren’t addressed “the tables may be turned on the United States directly in the WTO, but also through other countries walking away from core principles that have long been critical to U.S. success in the global economy.” - ...

Net, net, net? It seems Obama is doing everything possible to impede US energy export competitiveness, and that could have some pretty unpleasant ramifications down the road aside from the more obvious immediate jobs and trade balance issues.

I'm sure some clever coal engineering nerds will eventually figure out some way around this Obama foot dragging so they can still export product and not call it a "coal export". They could maybe do some semantic trickery like fine grind it and mix it up with up a thick bunker-C grade oil and call it an "oil export" of some sort and send it out of existing oil terminals. People can be pretty clever about working around government regulatory roadblocks when they have to. They shouldn't have to resort to that kind of trickery though.

With China having ~70% of its power supplied by coal, they're going to be getting it somewhere. There's very significant domestic Chinese production, but they still need some imports too. If that isn't the US, then its going to be someone else. If its anyone else, then US influence on Chinese policy/behavior is diminished.

With the US coal industry running at idle speed and domestic uses being crippled more and more by the Obama administration regulation every day, being able to export expeditiously is a big deal. Jobs depend on it.

posted by Purp at 12:46 PM

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