In re Sierra Club

Five environmental organizations filed a petition for writ of mandamus in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to compel the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to respond to a 2013 petition in which the organizations requested that the agency issue rules regarding how it will decide whether exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) are “consistent with the public interest” pursuant to the Natural Gas Act. The petitioners argued that in the absence of guidelines or regulations regarding the “public interest” determination, DOE had “repeatedly issued ad-hoc and inadequate ‘public interest’ analyses that have failed to meaningfully consider highly pertinent factors like the environmental impacts of the actual export terminals themselves, the climate change-related impacts associated with the extraction, refinement, transportation, and ultimate combustion of the gas being exported, and the effect of increased gas exports on the price of domestic gas for low-income ratepayers.” The environmental organizations further argued that the nearly 10-year delay in responding to their petition was “patently unreasonable.” The petition stated that DOE’s “authorization of LNG exports without meaningful ‘public interest’ review not only harms [already overburdened] communities, but it also threatens to undermine the country’s ability to adequately respond to the climate crisis.”