How one New England gas terminal exposes terrible U.S. energy policies

,

Travis Fisher and Josh Loucks of the Cato Institute this week used New England’s reliance on imported natural gas to show how bad U.S. energy policies hurt Americans. It’s so dumb, the only explanation is “government.”

“Just north of Boston in Everett, Massachusetts sits the poster child for irrational energy permitting in the United States. The Everett Marine Terminal is a facility that connects imported liquefied natural gas (LNG)—often from Trinidad, more than 2,200 miles away—to natural gas delivery networks in New England. This is an absurd outcome for at least three reasons:

  1. New England demands natural gas, which generated 55 percent of the electricity on the New England power grid in 2023 and heats about half of the homes in Massachusetts,
  2. Abundant natural gas resources are being developed nearby. However, states like New York can abuse environmental statutes like the Clean Water Act to block any new pipeline that would move shale gas to New England. The Marcellus shale gas play (the most productive formation in the country) extends through Pennsylvania into New York, which shares a long border with Massachusetts, and
  3. Even if no new pipelines were built through New York state from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts, several American LNG export terminals (in Maryland, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) could supply New England if not for arcane laws like the Jones Act. As my Cato colleague Colin Grabow explains, the Jones Act “restricts domestic shipping to vessels that are US-flagged, built, owned, and crewed,” which effectively bans LNG shipments between US ports.”

Yes, New England imports natural gas from thousands of miles across the Atlantic because state and federal policies make it so difficult to move it from places like Pennsylvania, Texas or Louisiana to New England.

Sometimes it’s cheaper and more efficient to import products from far away rather than produce them at home. That is not the case here. The foreign imports are a result of government prohibitions or restrictions on domestic imports.

That’s just one of many results of dumb energy policies created by politicians intent on preventing markets from working. For more harmful policies, read the whole piece here.

/by