https://dailycaller.com/2025/03/18/exclusive-biden-admin-buried-study-lng-crackdown-sources-say/
The Biden administration deliberately buried a final draft version of a study that would have undermined its January 2024 decision to pause approvals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects, according to four Department of Energy (DOE) sources.
Former Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and former President Joe Biden announced the LNG freeze in January 2024, stating that it would remain in place until the DOE could conduct a fresh study of the climate and economic impacts of LNG export growth. The Biden DOE finalized a draft of the study in 2023 and subsequently buried it because the initial version’s findings would have contradicted the administration’s rationale for the LNG freeze, according to four sources inside the Trump DOE granted anonymity by the Daily Caller News Foundation to freely discuss a sensitive matter.
“The Energy Department has learned that former Secretary 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 DOE source told the DCNF. “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.” (RELATED: Biden-Harris Admin Accused Of Deceiving America On Its Way To Freezing Gas Exports)
ICYMI last night:
A government watchdog group is alleging that the Biden-Harris Dept. of Energy effectively deceived the public to impose the LNG approvals moratorium. @DailyCaller
Quick
— Nick Pope (@realnickpope) October 3, 2024
The Biden DOE had essentially completed the final draft version of the LNG impacts study by the end of September 2023, and that version was ready to be presented to top Biden officials shortly thereafter, Trump DOE sources told the DCNF. That particular iteration of the study, DOE sources told the DCNF, found that increasing U.S. LNG exports would actually bring about a reduction in global emissions relative to other scenarios.
That particular finding is at odds with Granholm’s analysis of the final version of the study released to the public in December 2024, in which she argued that any increase in LNG exports will result in higher global greenhouse gas emissions.
At the end of September 2023, a Biden administration official left a comment on the final draft version that instructed others to halt work on it until further notice, despite other language in the document stating that the final version was to be published sometime around the end of September 2023, Trump DOE sources told the DCNF. That version of the study was never released publicly, and the Biden DOE considered it to be a “working document” given that the agency subsequently categorized it as part of an internal deliberative process, according to DOE sources.
Additionally, the Biden DOE appears to have deleted numerous pages that appeared in the September 2023 draft version from what became the final version of the report released to the public at the end of 2024, the Trump DOE sources told the DCNF.
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. 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. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: GOP Lawmakers Press Biden-Harris Admin Over Alleged Cover-Up Behind Major Fossil Fuel Crackdown)
