Washington paused approvals for new gas export terminals for what it called climate-change reasons
The temporary halt of approvals for new LNG export terminals by the administration of US President Joe Biden will undermine trust in the industry, Shell CEO Wael Sawan told the Financial Times in an interview on Sunday.
“I don’t think the recent announcement by the administration necessarily impacts, in the short or medium term, the supply of LNG, but I do think it erodes confidence in the longer term,” Sawan said.
The response comes as the British energy multinational, the world’s second-biggest LNG shipper after Qatar Energy, has found itself in a legal dispute with US exporter Venture Global LNG. In September, Shell along with BP launched separate arbitration proceedings against Venture Global for allegedly refusing to honor a multibillion-dollar supply contract.
Sawan added that Biden’s decision, compounded by Venture Global moving towards “not honouring the contracts with their foundation buyers” starts to raise more questions about “the stability and security of LNG from the US.”
Kathy Mikells, chief financial officer of ExxonMobil, criticized the White House’s decision as well, saying that such bans undermine efforts to wean energy-consuming nations off of coal.
“It means less US produced natural gas is available to replace coal around the world – that’s clearly a bad thing,” she said in an interview with FT.
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