H.R. 351, "LNG Permitting Certainty and Transparency Act"
Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH) introduced H.R. 351 on January 14, 2015. Under current law, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is required to grant applications for LNG exports to countries with a free trade agreement with the United States. Twenty countries have such agreements with the United States. For countries without free trade agreements, DOE is required to grant an application for the export of LNG unless it finds that the proposed export will not be consistent with the public interest. To date, DOE has issued final authorization for four such applications, and conditional approval for four additional applications.
H.R. 351 requires DOE to decide on export applications within 30 days of the completion of the environmental review. Environmental reviews would be complete, but DOE may not have sufficient time to consider the voluminous public comments on the environmental review and weigh the pros and cons of an application. If DOE is forced to make a decision before it can evaluate public comments on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) environmental review and make a reasonable public interest determination, it may have no choice but to deny the applications.
In the 113th Congress, the House voted on H.R. 6 as a previous attempt of this legislation becoming law.
The bill passed the House on January 28, 2015, by a vote of 277-133.