Macroeconomic Impacts of LNG Exports Studies

The Office of Fossil Energy (FE) of the Department of Energy (DOE) gives notice of the availability of two studies examining the cumulative impacts of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports in the above- referenced proceedings and invites the submission of comments regarding those studies. DOE commissioned the studies to inform DOE's decisions on applications seeking authorization to export LNG from the lower-48 states to non-free trade agreement countries.\1\ The first study, performed by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and originally published in October 2014, assessed how specified scenarios of increased natural gas exports could affect domestic energy markets (2014 EIA LNG Export Study). At DOE's request, this study was an update of EIA's January 2012 study of LNG export scenarios using baseline cases from EIA's 2014 Annual Energy Outlook. The second study was performed by the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University's Baker Institute and Oxford Economics, under contract to DOE (2015 LNG Export Study). This 2015 LNG Export Study is a scenario-based assessment of the macroeconomic impact of levels of U.S. LNG exports sourced from the lower-48 states in volumes ranging from 12 to 20 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas under a range of assumptions, including U.S. resource endowment, U.S. natural gas demand, international LNG market dynamics, and other factors. These two studies are posted on the DOE/FE Web site at: http://www.energy.gov/fe/2015- lng-study. DOE may use the 2014 EIA LNG Export Study and the 2015 LNG Export Study to inform its decisions in the listed proceedings and for other purposes. Comments submitted in compliance with the instructions in this notice will be placed in the administrative record for all of the above-listed proceedings and need only be submitted once. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------