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Unprompted by industry, Pruitt touts LNG during Morocco trip

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt became the latest Trump official to tout American LNG during a recent trip to Morocco, surprising industry officials who have not typically gotten a boost from the agency.

"I don't have a real good answer as to why Pruitt was the one delivering that information," Charlie Riedl, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Liquefied Natural Gas, said in an interview. "This administration is pushing LNG any opportunity they have."

The EPA on Dec. 12 issued a news release that said Pruitt had met with Moroccan Energy Minister Aziz Rabbah "to discuss new and ongoing areas of collaboration under the Free Trade Agreement and the country's interest in importing LNG." He also held meetings with Moroccan Secretary of State of Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mounia Boucetta and Moroccan Minister of Justice and Liberties Mohamed Aujjar to talk about "ongoing strategic cooperation" between the two countries and toured the IRESEN Green Energy Park, according to the EPA.

While the U.S. LNG industry has met with officials from the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. State Department about promoting exports during international visits, Riedl said the EPA's role in regulating LNG has typically been limited to the permitting of liquefaction and export terminals within U.S. borders.

"I was just as surprised as everyone else when I saw that press release," Riedl said. "It's not an office that we typically have a lot of interaction with."

Pruitt's pitch drew fire from environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, which said in a statement that the administrator was acting "like a globe-trotting salesman for the fossil fuel industry who can make taxpayers foot the bill."

The EPA declined to comment beyond the news release.

The Trump administration has promoted U.S. LNG in its call for "energy dominance," pointing to exports of abundant American shale supplies as a way to create domestic jobs while fulfilling the president's promise to slash the U.S. trade deficit. The Lower 48 has just one operational LNG export project, Cheniere Energy Inc.'s Sabine Pass in Louisiana. A second is in the commissioning phase, four others are under construction and more than a dozen are seeking a spot in the global market.

With plans in Morocco to build an LNG import terminal at the industrial hub of Jorf Lasfar, the country "is an exciting new LNG market prospect and could benefit tremendously from the U.S. model," which ties pricing to Henry Hub, rather than oil, said Fred Hutchison, executive director of LNG Allies, another Washington-based trade group.

Fred Beach, assistant director for policy studies at the University of Texas' Energy Institute, said that while it is "a little out of the norm" for the EPA administrator to tout LNG in international meetings, "it's at least coherent that the EPA would be advocating LNG exports as a part of broader U.S. policy."

"[Natural gas] is what is getting our emissions down in the U.S. for the past several years," he said. "There's no reason to think we wouldn't bring that message abroad."