Building pipelines and other oil and gas infrastructure is key to keeping a lid on U.S. energy prices as Europe and Asia grapple with spiraling energy import costs, the chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said Thursday.
FERC is taking steps to slash “burdensome processes” to make permitting more efficient and get “critical, needed infrastructure built and online as quickly as possible,” said Laura Swett. That would drive down energy prices, she added.
Swett, a Republican, made the comments as the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran is nearing its fourth week and as QatarEnergy reported missile attacks Thursday morning on several of its liquefied natural gas facilities, including its largest export terminal, Ras Laffan. Qatar until recently supplied 20 percent of the world’s LNG.
The United States, a major gas producer and the world’s largest LNG exporter, isn’t seeing the dramatic spikes in gas prices that are hitting energy importers in Asia and Europe. Attacks on tankers traveling through the Strait of Hormuz along with Israel’s and Iran’s targeted strikes on energy are pushing prices up. Meanwhile, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said this month it expects “U.S. natural gas prices to be relatively unaffected by this development.”
