Joe Biden is standing up to the gas giants in a bid to win over environmentally conscious voters. With nine months to go before the November 5 election, the president of the United States announced on January 26 that he was suspending all approvals for new liquefied natural gas production terminals for export. "While MAGA [Make America Great Again] Republicans willfully deny the urgency of the climate crisis, condemning the American people to a dangerous future," he wrote in a statement, "my administration will not be complacent."
Shell's director general, Wael Sawan, was not best pleased. This decision, he said, "erodes confidence in the longer term" in an industry that, in his view, plays a dual role: contributing to energy security, particularly in Europe following the closure of Russian pipelines, and participating in the green transition, by replacing coal. The move is one that's hard to swallow for the head of a group that made half of its 2023 profits ($28 billion) from gas. He is not alone – several American, European and Asian industrialists have signed a joint letter to Biden asking him to reverse the moratorium.
Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump has promised to repeal it immediately if re-elected. House speaker Mike Johnson, who is close to the fossil fuel industry and denies that human activity affects the climate, also counter-attacked on social media platform X (formerly known as Twiiter), posting: "The President is empowering Russia." The giant Calcasieu Pass 2 liquefaction terminal project, which is being put on hold, is in his state, Louisiana.
Biden's environmental track record will be at the heart of the campaign, even if purchasing power remains the priority for American voters. John Kerry, who was appointed special presidential envoy for climate in 2021, has stepped down from the position to spearhead that record in Biden's campaign team. The achievements are not negligible, such as the return to the Paris Agreement, huge subsidies ($375 billion) for decarbonization, and shutting down the Keystone XL Canada-Gulf of Mexico oil pipeline project.
But this track record is not unblemished either. In 2022, Biden asked Big Oil and Saudi Arabia to pump more black gold to bring down the price per barrel, and reauthorized drilling on federal lands on which he had banned it a year earlier. In the US, the reduction of the dependence on oil and gas is a mammoth task that has to be tackled at every election.