What Biden’s Natural Gas Mandate Means for Investors

He says it’s because of climate change.

But the real reason President Biden recently announced a pause in approvals for new natural gas export facilities is politics.  This is just a little more than a fig leaf for environmentalists who think we can just flip a switch and run the entire planet on clean energy.

While I’m easily the biggest renewable energy bull here at Energy & Capital, I’m also not so naive to believe that we can just magically, overnight, start running our cars, buildings, and entire digital infrastructure on sunshine and rainbows. 

Biden knows this, too. But with approval ratings in the gutter, he’s going to reach for anything he can. Make no mistake: if Biden wins the next election, new approvals for natural gas export facilities will miraculously reappear. 

But this is still a very dangerous game to play.  And quite frankly, could end up increasing carbon emissions instead of shrinking them.

Enriching Fascists and Dictators

While many of my tree-hugging brethren cheered this recent decision, they fail to realize that if the U.S. isn’t able to keep up with demand for natural gas exports, Russia and Algeria will be more than happy to pick up the slack.  

And make no mistake: the governments of those countries don’t give a shit about carbon emissions, nor do they have much interest in producing natural gas in accordance with the types of environmental regulations that currently exist in the U.S.

In other words, when it comes to producing natural gas — despite the pollutive nature of it — there’s much less in the way of environmental burdens here than in Russia and Algeria.

So if the U.S. can’t keep pace with natural gas demand in other parts of the world because the Biden administration is “pausing” approvals for new natural gas export facilities, they’ll take their business elsewhere.  And “elsewhere” is a pit of pollution, secured by dictators who not only have no interest in hearing the concerns of environmentalists, but are also more than happy to make them disappear.

These are not the folks you want to enrich by enabling them to produce and sell more natural gas. And while I realize that Biden is just pandering to environmentalists on this one, the fallout from this could result in more environmental damage, not less. 

Consider again, Russia picking up additional market share because the U.S. can’t, or won’t, keep pace with demand.

Russia’s oil and gas assets release more methane emissions than any other oil and gas-producing country in the world.   

There was also an investigation a couple years ago that showed a number of Russian oil companies dumping millions of tons of drilling waste into rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean.  And apparently, this is common practice.

Environmentalists supporting Biden’s decision on this really have no clue as to how important it is for the U.S. to be the primary source of LNG exports in the world. 

This is true for investors, too.  Certainly we’ve seen proof of this over the past decade or so following the rebirth of America’s oil and gas industry.  And this continues to be a major source of wealth for Energy & Capital readers, too.

In fact, we recently sent you a new report from our in-house oil & gas expert, Keith Kohl, who provides some very convincing intel that we’re about to enter another 10-year bull market in oil, with prices creeping back up over $100 a barrel and staying there for the foreseeable future. 

You can download that report here.

The way I see it, one of the best ways to ensure a reasonable level of environmental sustainability is to do everything we can to ensure that the lion’s share of natural gas exports comes from the U.S.  

And if we can make a few bucks along the way, even better.

To a new way of life and a new generation of wealth…

Jeff Siegel

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Jeff is the founder and managing editor of Green Chip Stocks. For more on Jeff, go to his editor’s page.