Allowing LNG exports would send positive signals, experts say

News
January 18, 2013
WASHINGTON, DC
By Nick Snow 
OGJ Washington Editor
 
Authorizing US LNG exports would send positive signals not just to producers, but also to capital markets that would in turn finance new transportation systems, experts suggested at a conference on American energy exports.
 
Additional US gas resources are available, but aren’t necessarily being produced, said Kevin Book, managing director of research at ClearView Energy Partners LLC. That will require capital, which institutional and other major investors will hesitate to commit without more certain energy policies, he said on Jan. 16 at a conference cosponsored by Women in International Trade and the US Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy.
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Other conference speakers said federal energy policies based on growing US scarcity need to be reconsidered. Karen A. Harbert, director of the Institute for 21st Century Energy, said when she was a DOE official in 2005, discussions about LNG terminals involved imports instead of exports. “We have to find jobs for 20 million people in the next 10 years,” she said. “Energy could provide a lot—if we let it. It’s the real engine of our economic recovery.”
 
Because the federal government controls so much of the nation’s energy resources, more access clearly is needed, Harbert maintained, adding, “We need to update our energy infrastructure, which has not been dramatically increased since World War II. We’re going to need more pipelines.”
 
 
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