A lack of infrastructure and “well funded” opposition groups are depriving Americans and U.S. trading partners of the country’s abundant and cheap natural gas, participants in the Department of Energy’s 2020 Natural Gas Summit said last week.

Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette kicked off the virtual event Thursday with a warm tribute to the oil and gas industry.

“We talk about this industry often in terms of number of jobs created, and that’s absolutely true: You are hiring Americans all across the country and, in fact, all across the world,” Brouillette told industry executives participating in the summit. “But you are also providing this president — and any future president who chooses to wrap their arms around this important industry — with foreign policy options that many presidents have not had in the last four to five decades.”

That spirit of bonhomie continued after Brouillette turned the mic over to the Trump administration’s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow, a panel moderator, who said: “No better cabinet officer than Dan Brouillette. None. Zero.”

Kudlow took a moment to praise his boss.

“President Trump has put a premium on energy and energy dominance, or energy independence, or however you want to call it, and he will continue to do so,” Kudlow said. “I don’t want to politicize this; I just want to say that the other team, if you will, has some bizarre plans that would do great harm to energy, to the economy, to jobs, and so forth.”

Kudlow made clear his stance on increased fossil fuel production in the U.S.

“I myself have become a tremendous proponent of LNG in negotiations with Europe. I’m an unpaid, un-commissioned salesperson,” he said. “Not too long ago, in 2008, I was the guy on TV who started the [CNBC show Kudlow & Cramer] every night for a couple months [saying,] ‘Drill, drill, drill.’ So, I think you understand my sympathies — or biases.”

And so it went during an event that was more a confab of gas industry insiders and supporters than a rigorous exploration of the potential impacts — good and bad — of expanded natural gas production and consumption in the U.S. and worldwide. Conspicuously absent from the summit were any representatives of “the other team,” presumably Democrats, environmentalists or Green New Dealers.

Here’s some of what RTO Insider heard.

Stepping on the Hose

“We know that the foundation of the economic recovery that we expect [after COVID-19] is going to be energy. This industry historically has provided inexpensive energy for the American people,” said Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute.

While other costs such as housing and education have risen as much as two-thirds over the past 10 years, household energy costs have declined 14.7% “as a consequence of the energy revolution that has happened in this country,” Sommers said.

Trump’s regulatory and tax policies have “supported” this industry, which “is going to lead the way from an economic recovery perspective,” he said. “But I think what is really important for the United States natural gas industry, in particular, is how do we get the infrastructure online so that we continue to support America’s energy revolution.”

Activists “on the other side of this industry” are seeking to halt that recovery, Sommers said.

“What they’ve figured out … is that they can’t beat us on the supply side, and they can’t beat us on the demand side — the world is going to continue to demand these products,” he said. “What they do is try to step on the hose in the middle and stop this country from building the infrastructure that it needs to continue to grow.”

“When you look at the profile of natural gas, it not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions … it’s the No. 1 reason why the U.S. has reduced greenhouse gas emissions more than any other country, including Europe. And we did it through market economics, not heavy-handed government policies,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance.

While the U.S. has led the world in volume of GHG reductions since 2000, it is still the second-largest emitter, behind China. E.U. countries, which emit fewer GHGs overall, have actually seen larger percentage reductions over that time. The U.S. and Canada still remain the biggest per capita emitters by far, at 18 tCO2e and 20 tCO2e, respectively.

Sgamma added that natural gas use has also contributed to the 77% decline in other air pollutants in the U.S. since 1970.

“If you want to see a clean energy transformation, it has to include natural gas,” American Gas Association CEO Karen Harbert said.

Sgamma said “the other team” is not “really interested in a solution that actually works and protects the environment. I think they’re interested in government control of the economy [and] government control of energy; and that involves a scarcity to the consumer, like the scarcity of natural gas in the dead of winter in New England, which when you hit that reality, it causes Russian imports to come in because they won’t let a pipeline be built.”

States such as Oregon, Washington and New York are using Clean Water Act certification processes “to stop interstate commerce by preventing pipelines,” she said, appealing to the Trump administration to “remove states’ ability” to take such actions.

Deputy Interior Secretary Katherine MacGregor, a former oil and gas lobbyist, lauded Trump for “absolutely chang[ing] the game of deregulation in Washington, D.C.” She called the administration’s move to shorten National Environmental Policy Act reviews from 4.5 years to under one year “nothing short of significant.”

“If you think about it, when you’re permitting a pipeline like Kathleen’s talking about … there’s so many different statutes you have to deal with, and there’s so many levers that folks who don’t want production can pull,” MacGregor said.

PennEnergy Resources CEO Richard Weber said any other county in the world would envy the U.S. position of having abundant natural gas. Gas projects confront opposition from “four or five very well funded, very left-wing environmental groups — or so-called environmental groups, because I think if you really cared about the environment you would embrace natural gas,” he said.

“We’ve solved the supply problem here in America,” Brouillette said. “What is challenging us, and what I think is challenging the industry, is an infrastructure problem. We need more pipelines. We need more export facilities. We have to improve our permitting processes so that we can allow this infrastructure to be built more quickly, more efficiently.

“The product has no value without its ability to get to market. … So, we must work much more aggressively to get that done,” he said.

Nathan Duckett, mayor of Farmington, N.M., said he “absolutely agrees” with the rollback of regulations on gas infrastructure. His city, which sits in the gas-rich San Juan Basin is “surrounded by public lands.”

“If they were to stop the extraction of natural gas from public lands, that would be a huge detriment to our area,” Duckett said, calling it a “stake in our heart.”

‘Fundamentally Wrong’

“I have nothing against renewables — nothing,” Kudlow said. “I think, as an amateur, solar has probably made the most inroads in the renewable field.”

But, he continued, “you only have 10% of energy coming from renewables, but my friends on the other team say we can do it all through renewables, maybe in 15 or 25 years. … If we’re only at 10% now, how does that happen? I just don’t get that. I don’t see a pathway.”

Renewables accounted for 11% of U.S. energy use and 17% of electricity consumption last year, according to the Energy Information Administration.

“It is fundamentally wrong at this point, in my view, to have a state or have a country adopt a 100% renewable policy,” Brouillette said. “There are a number of technologies that are coming online that are related to things like battery technology that may at some point allow some additional integration of renewable electricity generation into our electric grid, but it doesn’t exist today.”

Pointing to the recent grid emergencies that have plagued California, Brouillette called out the state’s policy goal of a carbon-free electricity system by 2050 on top of closure of its nuclear power plants.

“Now they’re looking at their natural gas industry and saying, ‘We don’t want you here. Our policy is going to be 100% renewables. And should we need some extra electricity, we’ll buy it from Arizona, we’ll buy it from Nevada,’ who are using natural gas and, in some cases, nuclear energy as well,” he said.

Brouillette likened California to his “environmentally sensitive” daughter who doesn’t want to buy a car but chooses to instead borrow one from her sister, which works fine until they both need it at the same time.

“And that’s what happened in California. They needed electricity because it was pretty hot, which is not unusual in California … but it was also hot in Arizona and Nevada. And those states chose to keep their electricity because they like their air conditioning and they wanted their lights to come on when they come home at night,” he said.

There are multiple competing theories about the main causes of the recent California blackouts, ranging from a shortage of imports to potential market manipulation. CAISO and state energy agencies will release a joint analysis of the events this month. (See Theories Abound over California Blackouts Cause.)