An environmental group sued the State Department for information about a senior official and former energy executive to determine whether he is serving the interests of the oil and gas industry in helping Europe acquire more fossil fuel supplies.
Friends of the Earth filed the complaint in a Washington, D.C., federal court on Tuesday after the department declined to expedite a Freedom of Information Act request the group filed on May 12 that sought ethics forms, agreements, and communications of Senior Adviser for Energy Security Amos Hochstein. [bold, links added]
The suit represents another noteworthy rift between the Biden administration and environmentalists.
FOE said it has an “urgent need” to acquire the information and expects it to “provide vital insight into the fossil fuel industry’s well-publicized efforts to use the war to lobby agencies within the federal government—including the State Department—to expand natural gas production and infrastructure.”
Hochstein, who was formerly the senior vice president for marketing at Texas-based liquefied natural gas company Tellurian and advised Ukrainian gas company Naftogaz, has been the lead on the administration’s energy diplomacy, including the new joint U.S.-EU Task Force for Energy Security.
President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the creation of the task force on March 25, a month into the war in Ukraine, giving it a mission of helping Europe find alternative natural gas supplies to Russian imports.
As part of that, the White House has committed to helping Europe secure an additional 15 billion cubic meters of gas this year from the United States and other sources, along with 50 billion cubic meters of gas from the U.S. through at least 2030.
Environmental groups have been critical of the task force for blessing the construction of new natural gas infrastructure, including pipelines and liquefaction terminals, considering it to be backsliding on green energy and climate change mitigation goals.
“This is not the climate leadership President Biden promised,” Lukas Ross, program manager at Friends of the Earth, said in a statement. “A former LNG executive in charge of increasing LNG exports is like something out of the Trump administration.”
Read more at Examiner
Friends of the Earth just another group of Eco-Freaks with a stupid name and founded by wackos and loose nuts
Green idiots need to understand that, even if the goal is to stop using carbon fuels, you will kill people by doing it overnight or too quickly. These people have no brains, period and should not be dismissed as stupid.