Will LNG Exports be Pushed to New Heights Under Trump’s Second Term?

As I outlined in my previous post, the Trump administration is poised to expand U.S. domestic oil production well beyond their already historic high levels. Here, I explore how the new administration is specifically poised for a similar expansion in natural gas production and liquefied natural gas (LNG) export, driven, like its projected oil policy, by promoting a lax regulatory environment for the U.S. natural gas market.

Since the first large-scale U.S. LNG export terminal opened in 2016, the U.S. has steadily integrated itself into the global LNG market, with new export-import relationships developed with countries across the globe. To capitalize on the market potential associated with this spike in U.S. natural gas production, LNG ports must be developed. Given the high-cost and timeline associated with LNG export terminal development, policies supporting a stable and predictable project development environment are necessary for corresponding long-term investment stability. Policies supporting long-term regulatory support for LNG export terminal development also foster domestic gas production investments given this expanded potential for commercial export.

In January of 2024, the Biden administration announced that the U.S. would pause pending decisions on permits to export liquefied natural gas to non-free trade agreement countries. Lifting Biden’s pause is likely to be a priority of the Trump White House—with the ambition of increasing the number of future LNG export terminals along U.S. coastlines.  In fact, Trump transition officials have already publicly hinted that reversing the Biden administration decision could be among the first energy policies enacted after Trump takes office.

Biden administration officials may attempt to “Trump proof” the pause by rushing the completion and release of a yearlong study that may aim to show that the greenlighting of future LNG export licenses would be against the U.S. public interest on climate, economic, and national security grounds. But even if this report were to be released and result in delays in lifting the pause (owing mostly to the potential for legal challenges), the Trump administration would have significant executive, legal, and legislative avenues to argue against the findings of the report.

Especially difficult to defend would be any conclusion that the LNG export terminal development pause supports current U.S. national security objectives. I had a frontline view of the rancor that even climate-focused European partners and allies had to the Biden pause, having taken off on an energy security research trip to Europe just minutes after a Friday evening announcement of the LNG export terminal pause, which was announced on 26 January 2024. A dreary photo I took just after the announcement from the White House went live, and just before takeoff from Philadelphia is provided in [Figure 1].

By the time I landed in Brussels, just eight hours later, my email and phone had been inundated by sharp concerns about the move raised by national security experts and officials across the European Union. In their view, the Biden White House was not considering the mid-to-long-term energy security of U.S. allies who had been working to rapidly reduce dependence on Russian natural gas—a decades-long objective by many leaders across the Transatlantic community—including President Biden himself during his many years in the U.S. Senate and as Vice President, where he, among other things, called the Kremlin-backed Nord Stream 2 pipeline a “bad deal for Europe.”

Rather, both domestic and foreign experts and commentators read the Biden administration’s move at the time as aimed at providing a fig leaf to energize climate-conscious voters ahead of the 2024 Presidential election – after all, the White House press statement included a laundry list of “Biden-Harris Administration Top Climate Accomplishments” following the details of the LNG export pause. Of course, we now know that this appeal to climate conscious voters did little to help either candidate Biden or his successor candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris defeat Mr. Trump in November 2024.

Worse yet, by announcing a pause versus an outright ban on future LNG infrastructure development and export, it also had the inadvertent result of disappointing climate activists by not going far enough, while simultaneously alienating European national security officials hoping for long-term stability U.S. export potential.

The second Trump White House will undoubtedly continue to disappoint climate scientists, experts, and activists by taking measures to supercharge the already unprecedented U.S. oil and gas production industry. However, while this path will be a poor outcome for climate action, an optimistic takeaway is that it could be leveraged to strengthen America’s role of supporting energy-insecure and vulnerable allies around the world.

Whether it be to backstop NATO allies and Ukraine that continue to be targeted by Moscow’s energy weaponization and kinetic strikes against infrastructure, or to reassure Indo-Pacific partners that rightly worry about sharp energy poverty scenarios in the event of any military contingency led by Beijing in either the cross-strait region against Taiwan, or else in the South China Sea, America’s energy security role will remain paramount. A strong and stable U.S. energy export potential isn’t the worst thing to have at a moment in history that has a real potential to continue to slide toward a degraded global security environment.

Time will tell if the second Trump White House will be able to effectively operationalize its energy role along with diplomacy and hard power to blunt the further strategic convergence of the Russian Federation, People’s Republic of China, North Korea, and Iran—all adversaries of the United States and its democratic allies worldwide. For the sake of global democracy, we must hope Trump 2.0 will succeed in doing so.

Benjamin Schmitt

Senior Fellow, Kleinman Center and SAS

Benjamin Schmitt is a joint senior fellow at the Kleinman Center and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Penn. He is also an affiliate of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and associate of the Harvard-Ukrainian Research Institute.