Joe Biden has caved into eco-zealots - to Vladimir Putin's glee, says Craig Mackinlay

The cost of energy has slipped out of the headlines in recent months. Temporary measures have calmed the markets recently, but the underlying causes that saw huge energy spikes for British families in 2022 – and the same across continental Europe – have not been permanently solved. A repeat of those catastrophic energy prices is not only possible, but likely.

This is all the more likely because of the recent decision by President Joe Biden to surrender his energy policy to the demands of the American Green lobby.

In January, President Biden announced a moratorium on US liquefied natural gas projects. His decision flew in the face of support for LNG from employers, trade unions, and independent agencies.

This week, America’s independent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved a new LNG project – Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2) in Louisiana.

The project is critical to global energy security - but it is now subject to President Biden’s LNG moratorium despite this week’s approval from the independent regulator. Newly constructed facilities may sit idle while the administration continues to conduct an ‘environmental impact study’. For how long? That is unclear.

Why does President Biden’s decision matter so much? Because both the EU and the UK have worked hard to remove Russian gas from our energy supply, since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. That Russian gas has been replaced in large part by American LNG. Shipments from the US to Britain and Europe have increased by 141 per cent since the Russian invasion.

Two-thirds of America’s gas exports are now being diverted to our markets, to replace the Russian gas that has been cut off. Just two weeks ago, Venture Global signed an early agreement with Ukraine’s DTEK to supply two million tonnes per annum of LNG over the next twenty years, underscoring the importance of American LNG across our region.

These shipments are critical to our businesses and consumers, and it is a very new phenomenon – US exports of LNG were at zero as recently as 2015. The current stable energy prices for British families and households are due in large part to US LNG.
That stability is now under threat.

If the U.S. cannot greenlight new facilities to meet our growing demand, then we are headed back to the bad old days of 2022. Either higher prices or being forced back into contracts with Russia.

The US Department of Energy should now lift their moratorium and approve CP2 and similar LNG export projects, in order to fulfil US commitments to allies abroad including the U.K., Germany, Italy and – crucially – Ukraine.

Americans are now waking up to the danger of President Biden’s caving into Green zealots. The Wall Street Journal this week described his decision as ‘a surrender to an army of TikTokers’ and causing ‘enormous political uncertainty’.

The losers from this decision include American energy workers, British and European energy consumers, and Ukrainians struggling to defend their homeland from Russian attacks on energy infrastructure. There is only one obvious beneficiary: Vladimir Putin.

It is absurd that the same ideology behind Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion is now driving U.S. energy policy. Whoever wins the General Election on 4th July, securing Britain’s future energy security, and preventing new price spikes, has to be an immediate priority.

That means calling out Biden’s pause on permits for what it is: a danger to international security and a betrayal of America’s allies.