The Biden administration buried a final draft of a study that undermined the reasoning behind its 2024 pause on approvals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects, a new report has found.
Four sources within President Donald Trump’s Department of Energy (DOE) told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the Biden administration’s DOE finalized the draft of a study in September 2023 that found global emissions would see a reduction if the U.S. increased its LNG exports. But that information contradicted what the Biden administration wanted to do to appease environmentalists who argued against LNG, so the administration buried the study.
“The Energy Department has learned that former Secretary [Jennifer] Granholm and the Biden White House intentionally buried a lot of data and released a skewed study to discredit the benefits of American LNG,” one source told the Caller. “They were prioritizing their own political ambitions over the interests of the American people, and the administration intentionally deceived the American public to advance an agenda that harmed American energy security, the environment and American lives.”
In Granholm’s analysis of the final study, released in December 2024 – nearly a year after the Biden administration paused LNG exports – she claimed the study found that increasing LNG exports would result in higher greenhouse gas emissions around the world.
At the end of September 2023, when the original final draft version was evaluated, a Biden administration official left a comment instructing staffers to stop working on the study until further notice, a source in the Trump DOE told the Caller. That version of the study was never released to the public and was categorized as part of the internal deliberative process.
As the Caller found after speaking to sources within the DOE, numerous pages from the September 2023 draft were deleted.
“While the September 2023 and December 2024 versions of the paper bear the same name, the final version released to the public did not include a specific type of analysis of LNG exports known as the consideration of market effects, Trump DOE sources told the DCNF,” the Caller reported. “That particular analysis — included in the buried September 2023 version of the study, but not the final product — found that U.S. LNG exports would bring down global emissions by displacing more polluting sources of energy abroad, and its absence from the December 2024 version allowed the Biden DOE to skew the final report’s findings against increasing LNG exports.”
The Caller’s DOE sources said the evidence showing the Biden administration’s burying of the report was being sent to Congress and would be released to the public.
In January 2024, when President Joe Biden issued the pause on LNG exports, he and Granholm both implied they were looking for more evidence about the effects of LNG.
“During this period, we will take a hard look at the impacts of LNG exports on energy costs, America’s energy security, and our environment. This pause on new LNG approvals sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time,” Biden said in a statement after announcing the pause. “While MAGA Republicans willfully deny the urgency of the climate crisis, condemning the American people to a dangerous future, my Administration will not be complacent. We will not cede to special interests.”
But the Biden administration already knew what effects LNG exports would have.
In January 2025, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told The Free Press that he spoke to Biden about the pause, but the president, who had dropped his re-election bid because of obvious cognitive decline, didn’t seem to remember signing the pause at all.
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[[{“value”:”
The Biden administration buried a final draft of a study that undermined the reasoning behind its 2024 pause on approvals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects, a new report has found.
Four sources within President Donald Trump’s Department of Energy (DOE) told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the Biden administration’s DOE finalized the draft of a study in September 2023 that found global emissions would see a reduction if the U.S. increased its LNG exports. But that information contradicted what the Biden administration wanted to do to appease environmentalists who argued against LNG, so the administration buried the study.
“The Energy Department has learned that former Secretary [Jennifer] Granholm and the Biden White House intentionally buried a lot of data and released a skewed study to discredit the benefits of American LNG,” one source told the Caller. “They were prioritizing their own political ambitions over the interests of the American people, and the administration intentionally deceived the American public to advance an agenda that harmed American energy security, the environment and American lives.”
In Granholm’s analysis of the final study, released in December 2024 – nearly a year after the Biden administration paused LNG exports – she claimed the study found that increasing LNG exports would result in higher greenhouse gas emissions around the world.
At the end of September 2023, when the original final draft version was evaluated, a Biden administration official left a comment instructing staffers to stop working on the study until further notice, a source in the Trump DOE told the Caller. That version of the study was never released to the public and was categorized as part of the internal deliberative process.
As the Caller found after speaking to sources within the DOE, numerous pages from the September 2023 draft were deleted.
“While the September 2023 and December 2024 versions of the paper bear the same name, the final version released to the public did not include a specific type of analysis of LNG exports known as the consideration of market effects, Trump DOE sources told the DCNF,” the Caller reported. “That particular analysis — included in the buried September 2023 version of the study, but not the final product — found that U.S. LNG exports would bring down global emissions by displacing more polluting sources of energy abroad, and its absence from the December 2024 version allowed the Biden DOE to skew the final report’s findings against increasing LNG exports.”
The Caller’s DOE sources said the evidence showing the Biden administration’s burying of the report was being sent to Congress and would be released to the public.
In January 2024, when President Joe Biden issued the pause on LNG exports, he and Granholm both implied they were looking for more evidence about the effects of LNG.
“During this period, we will take a hard look at the impacts of LNG exports on energy costs, America’s energy security, and our environment. This pause on new LNG approvals sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time,” Biden said in a statement after announcing the pause. “While MAGA Republicans willfully deny the urgency of the climate crisis, condemning the American people to a dangerous future, my Administration will not be complacent. We will not cede to special interests.”
But the Biden administration already knew what effects LNG exports would have.
In January 2025, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told The Free Press that he spoke to Biden about the pause, but the president, who had dropped his re-election bid because of obvious cognitive decline, didn’t seem to remember signing the pause at all.
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