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FREEPORT EXPLOSION FALLOUT: The explosion and resulting outage at Freeport LNG’s Gulf Coast terminal puts a major damper on the Biden administration’s campaign to get more natural gas to Europe, where supplies are even tighter now that Russia’s Gazprom is reducing flows to Germany and Italy.

The latest: Freeport offered an update on Tuesday extending the timeline of the outage through “late 2022,” effectively taking its full 2.13 billion cubic feet per day of capacity off the market for months. The company said it’s aiming to be partially back online within 90 days.

Freeport is also investigating the cause of the explosion but has preliminarily determined that part of an LNG transfer line was overpressurized and ruptured.

What Biden wants: Getting more LNG to Europe is a quiet priority of President Joe Biden's, one his administration is working on furiously behind the scenes but which is rarely promoted by officials in public, as it’s been extremely controversial with his green constituencies.

Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen formed their joining U.S.-EU Task Force for Energy Security on March 25, with a focus on negotiating more LNG volumes for the EU from the world’s top suppliers, including the U.S.

The two executives had laid the groundwork for the task force about two months before the task force was announced, before the war began, in a statement recognizing LNG as an asset that enables Europe to be more secure in its energy supplies.

The task force itself asks a lot of U.S. LNG producers. Biden committed to helping meet an additional 50 billion cubic meters of European gas demand with U.S. LNG beginning next year through the end of the decade.

This year’s target is 15 bcm of additional LNG from the U.S. and other producers.

What the blast means: The Freeport outage is a significant setback to that end, as the terminal is responsible for supplying an increasing share of Europe’s total imports since the war began. Freeport is typically responsible for around 16% of export capacity.

LNG terminals have been operating at peak capacity but estimates for total feedgas shipments have been adjusted downward by nearly 2 billion cubic feet per day because of the outage, according to the American Gas Association.

LNG feedgas had been expected to average around 13 billion cubic feet per day this month and 13.2 bcf per day in July but are now forecasted to average 11.3 bcf per day, AGA said in its most recent market report.

A spokesperson for the Department of Energy said the department is hopeful that Freeport can reopen as quickly as possible and noted that Venture Global’s project at Calcasieu Pass, which will provide 1.41 bcf per day of capacity, is expected to be fully online later in the year.

“We expect all other U.S. LNG projects to continue to safely export close to their operational capacities for the remainder of the year,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Jeremy Beaman (@jeremywbeaman) and Breanne Deppisch (@breanne_dep). Email [email protected] or [email protected] for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.

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ANOTHER PLAY WITH THE DPA: Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre clarified yesterday that the “emergency authorities” which Biden told refiners he may invoke to increase refinery output include those under the Defense Production Act.

Jean-Pierre didn’t offer any more specifics but said Biden has shown a “willingness to use that emergency powers [sic] to lower costs for families.”

That he has. Biden’s already leaned on the DPA multiple times to try and address shortages, including shortages of multiple energy-related products.

His latest invocation of the DPA, announced last week, would be directed toward manufacturing more solar products, transformers, and insulation.

OIL GROUPS PUSH BACK ON BIDEN LETTERS TO REFINERS: Executives from the American Petroleum Institute and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers pushed back on Biden’s claims that U.S. refiners are not doing their part to ramp up production and help lower energy costs.

API President Mike Sommers and American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers CEO Chet Thompson noted in a letter made public this morning that U.S. refiners are currently running at a "world-leading" 94% of capacity.

“Although the Russian invasion is undoubtedly exacerbating the situation, today’s challenges are largely the result of high crude prices due to 1) a supply/demand imbalance, 2) logistics reshuffling as the world emerges from the pandemic, strong consumer demand, the ban on Russian products, and 3) policy decisions made at the federal and state levels over many years and by successive administrations," Sommers and Thompson wrote.

The executives also noted that investing in additional capacity is a long-term decision and is discouraged by Biden's efforts to move the economy away from fossil fuels, citing his campaign comment that he meant to “end fossil fuel." In fact, they added that U.S. refiners are adding new refining capacity “where it makes business sense.”

This response comes just hours after Biden called on seven large integrated refinery operators, including ExxonMobil, BP, and Shell, to ramp up production of oil and diesel fuel. Read more from Breanne here.

LATEST ENVIRONMENTALIST SPLIT WITH ADMINISTRATION: Environmental groups took the Biden administration to court over its approval of more than 3,500 federal land drilling permits in New Mexico and Wyoming, arguing their use will harm damage ecosystems and threaten "climate-imperiled" species.

The lawsuit, filed yesterday in a Washington, D.C., federal court, asks the court to find that the Bureau of Land Management violated the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws in approving the permits and to therefore vacate them.

The complaint was led by the Center for Biological Diversity and the New Mexico-based group Wildearth Guardians.

Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said separately the approvals will result in increased greenhouse gas emissions and bring "polar bears and many other species one step closer to extinction.”

Environmental groups versus Biden: The lawsuit represents the latest legal feud between the Biden administration and environmental groups, who have been displeased with the slow pace of progress and perceived backtracking on Biden's green agenda.

Read more from Jeremy here.

DEMOCRATS PUSH FOR EXPENSIVE ELECTRIC VEHICLES AS GAS PRICE FIX: With U.S. gas prices at an all-time high, some Democrats have sparked criticism for their proposed solution: stop buying gas, and switch instead to an electric vehicle.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow Michigan has repeatedly advised that consumers switch to electric vehicles to avoid paying hundreds more in gas prices per month—remarks Republicans have panned as “out of touch” with average consumers, many of whom can not afford the high up-front costs of an EV.

Stabenow drew ire last week when she said it “doesn’t matter” how high gas prices go because she drives an electric vehicle.

According to Kelley Blue Book, the average cost of an electric vehicle is $56,437, roughly $10,000 more than the industry average—and not much less than the median household income of $67,521.

Making matters worse: EV availability is limited in the U.S., analysts said. And “the majority of those that are available for sale are sold by luxury brands — and they’re priced that way,” Mark Schirmer, the director of public relations at Cox Automotive, told Breanne.

That means that, at least for now, many drivers will be forced to stick to their fuel-powered vehicles—even as prices threaten to reach $6 or more this summer. According to data published this month by Cox Automotive and Kelley Blue Book, the average U.S. driver is now paying nearly $275 a month for gas, a $105 increase from June 2021. Read more from Breanne here.

NEARLY 400 CRASHES INVOLVING AUTOMATED TECH VEHICLES: A newly published National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report said U.S. automakers reported nearly 400 crashes over the last 10 months involving automated tech vehicles. 273 of those crashes, or nearly 70%, involved Teslas.

The report is NHTSA’s first effort to broadly measure crashes involving vehicles with partially automated driver-assist or autopilot systems—seeking to identify any emerging risks and assess their operation in the real world.

According to the Associated Press, the report found that Tesla’s crashes happened while vehicles were utilizing Autopilot mode or other driver-assist technologies, including “Full Self-Driving,” “Traffic Aware Cruise Control,” or other features that allow the vehicle to have some degree of control over steering and speed,

But the programs names might be misleading—as AP notes, Tesla has cautioned that the vehicles cannot drive themselves—warning that drivers must be “ready to intervene at all times.”

HIGH TEMPERATURES AND HUMIDITY KILL 2,000 CATTLE IN KANSAS, OFFICIALS SAY: Extreme heat and humidity in Kansas have killed “thousands” of cattle across the state in recent days, the Kansas Department of Health and Human Services said yesterday, warning of more extreme temperatures in the days and weeks ahead.

According to officials from the Kansas Livestock Association, cattle began suffering heat stress on Saturday when high temperatures and humidity spiked abruptly, catching ranchers and animals by surprise. The cattle “could not acclimate” to the sudden shift, livestock officials added.

Kansas, which has more than 2.4 million cattle in feedlots, is the third-largest cattle state in the U.S., after Texas and Nebraska. But the extreme heat patterns could pose a larger problem to livestock this summer, officials said, adding that animals are “expected to suffer from oppressive heat and stress.”

Temperatures climbed to 108 degrees in northwest Kansas on Monday, and threaten to climb as high as 110 degrees in western parts of the state this weekend. “It’s going to be oppressively hot and stressful for the animals,” Drew Lerner, president of World Weather Inc., told Reuters.

The Rundown

Politico EU How Ukraine wants to make Russia pay for war’s environmental damage

New York Times Flooding chaos in Yellowstone, a sign of crises to come

Associated Press Australia commits to reducing greenhouse emissions by 43%

Washington Examiner California gas station manager fired after 69-cent-per-gallon mishap

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THURSDAY | JUNE 16

3 p.m. 1201 Pennsylvania Ave. Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES) will hold a forum examining the SEC climate disclosure rule and role of U.S. plastics in global climate mitigation. A networking reception will follow. Find out more and register here.