If you have followed the LNG “pause” scandal outed by GAO Freedom of Information Act litigation, chronicled here, you know that the Biden-Harris DoE conducted a 2023 LNG export study then buried it, then effectively lied about this with a January 2024 announcement that LNG exports to non-free trade agreement countries were being paused in order to…conduct such a study.
More specifically, “DOE Will Initiate a Process to Update Economic & Environmental Analyses Used to Review LNG Export Applications to non-Free Trade Agreement Countries.” Will. Initiate. It gets better! “Today’s action will begin an update of this analysis.”
Except, DoE had long ago initiated the process, and had even received the draft report. It just didn’t like the result, which was to reach the same conclusion as previous studies—these exports are a good thing! Given that conclusion not only didn’t support, but stood in the way of the Biden-Harris DoE doing what the Sierra Club and others among its political/ideological base were demanding, the administration lied in January 2024. Sorry, got everyone “on the same page”.
Unfortunately for the administration, not knowing someone(s) in the know would leak the outrage, and that it would get caught out in the lie, this unambiguous bluster left no room to shoehorn in the current position.
Now, a Vaughn Index, or privilege log, filed in the DC District Court on Friday night by the DoE confirms the lie:
Sample page — Hey Grok, what does ‘fudging it’ look like?
This went on for pages. Despite its January 2024 insistence that now, it would initiate a review, in its privilege log filed with the court DoE goes to great pains to say the 2023 draft reports were drafts of a December 2024 report, which report was—without doubt, ordered in January 2024 and initiated sometime thereafter. We believe them!
Unfortunately, that conception came several months after DoE’s supposed late-stage drafts had been shared then kicked around between DoE and the National Energy Technology Laboratories (and, of course, outside consultants).
These June-October drafts were not drafts of a report not even conceived of until the end of January 2024. DoE has been caught lying, and on Friday made things much, much worse for itself.
The index is littered with (clearly disingenuous) claims that end-stage 2023 “drafts” were instead an “Early version” of the December 2024 study initiated in January 2024 or thereafter, and include claims that one August 2023 email “was sent in October [sic] 2023—14 months before the LNG export study was released in December 2024.” Why, yes, the email was indeed sent months before the study was even requested/“initiated”!
Another entry about a late October 2023 document states, “The latest-in-time draft study in the timeframe relevant timeframe to Plaintiff’s FOIA request—attachment in Document 81, sent October 27, 2023—includes extensive comments and edits.” Wow, DoE was in the late-stage editing process of a report that wasn’t even ordered for three more months!
DoE was either the most prescient of agencies, or the most dishonest. GAO trusts the reader will form his own opinion.