On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo reacted to Russian liquid natural gas (LNG) exports to Europe surpassing those from the United States by stating that this is “a quirk in the data that will soon be reversed.”
Co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin asked, “[T]here has been a major debate going on about energy, and, specifically, LNG. And I wanted to ask you about it, because there’s a talking point that a lot of folks have talked about just yesterday, it came out of the FT, I believe, in May, that showed that, given the pause on LNG in the U.S., that Russia[n] exports of natural gas going into Europe exceeded that of the United States. And I’m so curious how you think about that.”
Adeyemo answered, “So, I think that what you’ll see is that’s a quirk in the data that will soon be reversed. But more importantly, what we’ve done has not paused current LNG shipments. Those are continuing. Right now, the United States is producing more energy than any country in the world. We’re producing more oil than Saudi Arabia. But what we know is that, ultimately, for American consumers, who we care about the most, to have low-cost energy, we need a better mix. And that’s why the President’s so focused — one of the reasons the President’s so focused on clean energy. But today, we’re producing more natural gas than at any point in our history. And a lot of that’s going to support Europe and it’s going to continue to do so. What the President has announced is that we’re going to take time to look at the impact of what we’re doing in terms of producing natural gas in order to evaluate what we do going forward. But this, in no way, interrupts the supply that we have now, which is leading the world, in terms of both natural gas and oil production.”
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