America’s Energy Advantage Calls for Nat Gas Export Restrictions – Again. Why Now?

Today on Real Clear Politics, Jennifer Diggins, Public Affairs director for Nucor Energy and Chair of America’s Energy Advantage (AEA), urges the Department of Energy (DOE) to ‘slow-track’ applications to export domestically-produced liquefied natural gas (LNG). Other AEA members include Eastman, Huntsman, Celanese, Alcoa, and, most prominently, Dow Chemical.

The question is one of timing. Why now? AEA made a big splash back in March when Dow CEO Andrew Liveris decried “unfettered” LNG exports in testimony before the House Energy & Commerce Committee and on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal. But during the past few months, Dow and AEA have not said much about curbing gas exports. Indeed, Dow recently posted a column on its blog extolling the benefits of free trade. There’s not a trace of Liveris’s mercantilist fervor in that column.

I suspect Diggins is responding to “This Gas Is Dow’s Gas,” a song and video produced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) lampooning Dow’s anti-gas export campaign as corporate welfare, rent seeking, and political plunder. See CEI’s press release for details and commentary by your humble servant.

To watch the video, click on This Gas Is Dow’s Gas.