Trump or Harris, the US will keep pumping gas for Europe

There’s one guaranteed victor in Tuesday’s United States election: Europe’s addiction to American fossil fuels.
Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have championed America’s gas exports as they try to win the White House, albeit with predictably opposing rhetoric. That will come as a relief in Europe. 
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost three years ago, the European Union has been scrambling for alternative energy providers — and Washington has only been too happy to oblige. In the first half of this year, the U.S. provided around 48 percent of the EU’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports, compared to Russia’s 16 percent. And last year, the U.S. became the world’s largest exporter of the all-important fuel.
However, the U.S. spooked European officials earlier this year when President Joe Biden paused permits for new LNG projects stateside to review the environmental and economic effects. The move sparked fears of future shortages and warnings that Europe had made the mistake of replacing over-reliance on Russia with over-reliance on America.
Europe can rest easy, however. Whether it’s “drill, baby, drill!” Trumpism or Harris’ environment-versus-manufacturing balancing act, everyone agrees Europe won’t be losing access to U.S. gas anytime soon.
“There’s no decision that a new president could conceivably make on LNG that would mean much for European energy markets this winter or next,” said Tom Marzec-Manser, lead gas market analyst at commodities giant ICIS.
When the U.S. first revealed its decision to temporarily halt permitting for new LNG plants, it was seen as a concession to environmentally conscious voters. Globally, however, there were other political considerations at play — namely the need to not lose a key energy source. 
Government officials the world over gave the Biden administration an earful, U.S. Energy Department Deputy Secretary David Turk said in a recent interview. But, Turk noted, even big U.S. LNG buyers are also taking steps to eventually reduce their own demand.
“We’ve talked to our Japanese colleagues, our Korean colleagues, all of our colleagues,” he said. “And when we explain the rationale for why we’re doing this study, why we’re doing the pause, I’ve heard a lot of comfort level that we need to do right, not only by the national security implications, but I’ve heard from a lot of these countries, especially in Europe, we need to do right by the climate and environmental considerations as well.”
Presumably, the Biden-initiative review would only survive under a Harris presidency. 
Trump’s team would be keen to approve LNG export permits as quickly as possible, whether Europe needs the gas or not, analysts said. Trump himself has boasted about oil and gas reserves being “liquid gold” for the U.S. and during his administration promoted the LNG industry almost constantly.  
Expectations are that a Trump Energy Department would ignore any suggestions about tweaking the gas permitting process and that a Republican-led Congress would try to truncate the department’s role in the matter.
“Under a Trump administration, it will be full speed ahead,” said Ben Cahill, an energy markets expert at the University of Texas at Austin.
But ignoring findings from the Biden-initiated review could create speed bumps to getting new permits approved. Although any findings won’t be a binding rule, environmental groups are likely to sue over permits a Trump administration approves that don’t consider the review’s conclusions.
While Harris has been keener to burnish her green credentials, she has been politically pragmatic — ditching, for instance, a pledge during her prior presidential run to ban fracking, the natural gas extraction technique that employs thousands in the key swing state of Pennsylvania.
Given that, a Harris victory is unlikely to stop the flow of LNG as some progressives have demanded, experts say. In addition to the political fights that would involve, U.S. gas is also seen as crucial to balancing markets with wars raging in Europe and the Middle East. 
“A Harris administration would be hard-pressed to walk back LNG projects and exports to allies,” said James Noe, a lawyer with Holland & Knight who lobbies for the energy industry. “We could see a continuation of the hold-your-nose stance where she allows some aspects of the oil and gas development to continue.”
According to Marzec-Manser, the ICIS analyst, even maintaining the pause would mean little except in the very long term.
“The plants that are already running, and the handful of plants in the final stages of starting to commission or being built, they won’t be impacted. And there’s at least one other project waiting to take [a] final investment decision that will be unaffected even if the pause is kept in place.”
While both Trump and Harris are looking to the energy industry to provide tax revenues and blue-collar jobs, a fossil fuel embrace could prove more uncertain than they might hope.
A surge in natural gas exports to Europe, combined with the massive power demand from new data centers used for artificial intelligence, could raise the price of natural gas, said David Goldwyn, a former Obama administration official and president of international energy advisory consultancy Goldwyn Global Strategies.
“New applications are going to have to withstand some criticism from the domestic industry because if domestic natural gas demand increases as much as [market analysts] seem to think it will for data centers, there’s going to be increased upward pressure on natural gas prices,” Goldwyn said. “Even a Trump administration may take some pause in approving new applications if they’re worried about it hurting domestic industry.”
And the politics of fossil fuel exports doesn’t end with voters in places like Pennsylvania but with the global market.
“Both candidates would engage in a high-stakes game on trade and subsidies policy,” said Georg Zachmann, an energy economist at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels. “While the negotiation style of both candidates seems to differ drastically — the results are hard to predict as they also depend on the trade partners’ reaction.”
Take Trump’s vision of across-the-board tariffs on imports. 
“Those might imply less U.S. imports,” Zachmann said. “But in turn, they will also result in less U.S. exports, including LNG.”
Gabriel Gavin reported from Brussels. Ben Lefebvre and Josh Siegel reported from Washington, D.C.