The House Oversight and Accountability Committee is in possession of a key study on natural gas as of Wednesday that the Biden administration withheld in order to move forward with its 2024 crackdown on liquefied natural gas (LNG).
The Biden Department of Energy (DOE) “intentionally buried” a final draft version of a study assessing impacts of LNG export growth in 2023 over worries that it would not support the rationale for the Biden administration’s January 2024 decision to unilaterally freeze LNG export approvals, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported Tuesday. Prior to Wednesday’s announcement, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee had previously demanded that the Biden DOE provide the buried 2023 study — only alleged to exist until this week — for review, but Biden administration officials indicated that there was not a complete LNG study in 2023.
“Biden Administration officials, who religiously claimed to ‘follow the science,’ abandoned it to undermine American-made energy production, appease climate activists, and achieve their predetermined outcomes. As Secretary Granholm sought to weaken America’s LNG industry, the Biden Department of Energy withheld key data from both the American people and Congress in order to push forward their radical environmental agenda,” Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer, the committee’s chairman, said in a statement. “President Biden and his administration will go down as the least transparent in history. I am grateful to President Trump and Secretary Wright for providing the transparency the American people deserve and for taking action to restore America’s energy dominance.”
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee also published a timeline on Wednesday highlighting that its members sought — but were not granted — access to the study in question by the Biden administration, as well as former Assistant Energy Secretary Brad Crabtree’s December 2024 testimony that “a complete study did not exist in 2023.”
The Biden DOE effectively completed a final draft version of the LNG impacts study around the end of September 2023, and that iteration was ready to be shown to top Biden officials, Trump DOE sources previously told the DCNF. That version of the study concluded that increasing U.S. LNG exports would actually decrease global emissions relative to other scenarios, Trump DOE sources previously told the DCNF.
That conclusion does not align with former Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm’s take of the final version of the study disseminated to the public in December 2024, as she argued that any growth in LNG exports would lead to higher global greenhouse gas emissions.
At the end of September 2023, a Biden administration official commented on the final draft version to tell others to stop working on it until further notice, even though other language in the document said that the final version would be published sometime around the end of September 2023, Trump DOE sources previously told the DCNF. That version of the study was never released publicly.
“The Energy Department has learned that former Secretary Granholm and the Biden White House intentionally buried a lot of data and released a skewed study to discredit the benefits of American LNG,” one DOE source previously told the DCNF. “They were prioritizing their own political ambitions over the interests of the American people, and the administration intentionally deceived the American public to advance an agenda that harmed American energy security, the environment and American lives.”
On Wednesday, other news organizations — including Bloomberg News and Fox News Digital — confirmed the DCNF’s initial reporting on the existence of the buried study.
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