A bill to prohibit certain exports of natural gas produced or refined in the United States, and for other purposes.

Bill: 118-s-5286
Sponsor: full_name: Sen. Sullivan, Dan [R-AK]
Introduced: 2024-09-25
Policy area: Energy
Latest action: action_date: 2024-09-25
text: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

Summaries:

tv_txt: II 118th CONGRESS 2d Session S. 5286 IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES September 25, 2024 Mr. Sullivan introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources A BILL To prohibit certain exports of natural gas produced or refined in the United States, and for other purposes.

1. Findings Congress finds that— (1) natural gas that is produced or refined in the United States should be exported from domestic terminals given the economic and national security concerns associated with exporting that natural gas from countries with corrupt governments such as Mexico; (2) Mexico is ranked 126th out of 180 countries in the 2023 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, with corruption permeating political and economic segments of society in Mexico; (3) according to the 2023 Investment Climate Statement of the Department of State, Mexico’s current executive administration has eroded the autonomy and publicly questioned the value of specific antitrust and energy regulators and has proposed dissolving some of them to cut costs. Furthermore, corruption continues to affect equal enforcement of some regulations. ; (4) the corruption permeating Mexico is illustrated by the significant fuel theft in Mexico, which is so rampant that— (A) Roberto Díaz de León, the President of the National Fuel Retailers Association in Mexico, referred to fuel theft networks as main competitors of gas station owners; (B) according to Roberto Díaz de León, there were at least 4 illegal fuel stations for every 1 of the 13,000 legal fuel stations in Mexico, as of 2020; and (C) the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has suggested that as much as 4/5 of fuel theft is orchestrated by elements of the Mexican state, and fuel thieves depend on complicit politicians, police, and insiders at state-controlled oil companies to make fuel theft possible; (5) employees of the Mexican state-owned petroleum company, Pemex, have reportedly been threatened, kidnapped, and tortured by criminal cartels in Mexico to provide information on pipelines; (6) Pemex has faced frequent allegations of corruption, and, in 2018, Adrián Lajous Vargas, the former chief at Pemex, stated that corruption was rampant and everywhere in all areas and at all levels of the hierarchy ; (7) Mexico has centralized governmental power in its executive branch, including through judicial reforms in September 2024 that asserted political control over the judiciary of Mexico by subjecting all judges to replacement through elections that favor the ruling political party; (8) the politicization of the judicial branch in Mexico imperils the principle of impartiality and casts doubt on whether laws will be applied without favor, contracts will be honored, and trade disputes will be fairly resolved; (9) Mexican judicial reforms are expected to result in changes to regulatory agencies that are critical to upholding labor, environmental, and trade standards enshrined under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement; (10) Mexico has also been in violation of its energy commitments under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement through violations such as— (A) granting Mexican state-owned energy companies priority over private investors, including adopting several measures to favor Pemex and the state-owned electrical utility, the Comisión Federal de Electricidad, at the expense of foreign investors, the United States, and Canada; and (B) erecting new barriers to foreign trade and investment; and (11) the export of natural gas that is produced or refined in the United States and exported to terminals located in Mexico— (A) is not in the national interest of the United States; and (B) is a national security and trade concern to the United States. 2. Prohibition on exports of natural gas Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall export any natural gas produced or refined in the United States to a foreign country with the intent of further exporting that natural gas through a foreign LNG terminal (as defined in section 2 of the Natural Gas Act ( 15 U.S.C. 717a )).