08.03.15

Hoeven: Senate Energy Committee Approves Measures to Ease Restrictions on Crude Oil, LNG Exports

Senator Helped Develop Measures to Enhance Domestic Energy Production

WASHINGTON – Senator John Hoeven today announced that the U.S. Senate Energy Committee has approved two measures he cosponsored to enhance domestic energy production and the nation’s energy exports, the Offshore Production and National Security (OPENS) Act and the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Permitting Certainty and Transparency Act.

“We have passed two important provisions through the Senate Energy Committee,” Hoeven said. “The first ends the crude oil export ban, which will support the continued growth of our domestic oil industry. That means more energy produced here at home, more economic growth and jobs and lower gasoline prices at the pump for consumers. The second will enhance our exports of natural gas, which will reduce flaring by opening up markets for the natural gas we produce.”

The OPENS Act lifts the ban on the export of crude oil, similar to the Energy Supply and Distribution Act of 2015, which Hoeven helped introduce with Senate Energy Committee Chairman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in May. Hoeven said lifting the ban is supported by studies at the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the non-partisan Brookings Institute and the Harvard Business School.

The LNG Permitting Certainty and Transparency Act, which Hoeven helped introduce with Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) earlier this year, improves the approval process for exporting LNG to countries that do not have free trade agreements with the United States. This legislation is included in the bipartisan energy bill approved by the Senate Energy Committee last week and requires the Secretary of Energy to make a decision on any LNG export application within 45 days of a completed environmental review document.

The bill is similar to the LNG Certainty Act, legislation authored by Hoeven in the last Congress that required the Department of Energy to make a decision within 45 days of a company completing an LNG export application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Hoeven’s bill was a compromise between LNG export proposals offered by Republicans and Democrats and resulted from negotiations he held with Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

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