After a year in the spotlight, moving natural gas remains a gauntlet for companies

From Yahoo! Finance:

…The ongoing frustrations around projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline comes as the conversation about changes from Washington heat up.

“LNG exports, natural-gas pipeline policy is just huge right now,” says Devin Hartman, a former energy official and currently the director of Energy and Environmental Policy at the R Street Institute.

He says the outcome of ongoing debates around natural gas end up having more impact on the prices Americans pay for energy than the much high profile issues around oil drilling. These so-called “midstream policies” (ie getting the energy from the site of production to consumers) are what to watch, he said, “as your indicator of where the Biden administration might have to true-up its conflicting political objectives…”

At the White House, there are competing impulses on the issue, says Hartman. “It’s very, very conflicted right now, oil gas policy is super awkward for this administration,” he says…

Hartman, who worked at FERC during the Obama administration, has optimism that some midstream energy issues may be breaking through the bureaucracy. “A lot of FERC leadership recognizes [the difficult situation] and are really struggling with how to dance around this point…”