Outgoing Federal Energy Regulatory Commission member Bernard McNamee sees a bright future for U.S. natural gas, despite an unforgiving world market that has raised questions about how many LNG export projects will be built out of the large batch approved by the commission.

In an exit interview with S&P Global Platts on Aug. 25, Commissioner McNamee said his accomplishments at FERC include his role in advancing LNG projects and forging a compromise with former Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur that enabled some of those actions.

The economic downturn "presumably is not going to be long-lived … and the world economy will come back," McNamee said. With the LNG facilities that are ultimately built, the U.S. "will be in a good position to be able to take domestic natural gas produced by American workers with American investment and be able to ship it around the world, both to assist our allies and to provide markets for this gas [that] is going to help the American economy and the American worker."

Low international prices and coronavirus-related gas demand destruction were blamed for widespread U.S. LNG cargo cancellations that lasted through summer but began to ease for fall. With that backdrop, active developers of a dozen or so natural gas liquefaction projects have yet to make final investment decisions. Many have delayed decisions until 2021 or stopped updating target dates, and some have scaled back their proposals.

Still McNamee held out that there are "great opportunities for natural gas in the world economy."

The Republican FERC commissioner plans to step down Sept. 4. He will then take some time off and search for a job, likely in the "energy space," he said.

In the interview, McNamee emphasized his view that a commissioner's role is prescribed by "the law and the facts" in each case. He demurred on the question of whether it ultimately makes sense for FERC to have the authority to weigh the significance of the climate impact of its permitting decisions. Democrats on the commission increasingly have called for the climate to factor into energy infrastructure permitting, especially for natural gas transportation and export facilities. McNamee has held to the position that the commission lacks the authority to consider the upstream or downstream effects of greenhouse emissions and climate change in its gas pipeline project permitting, except for certain narrow circumstances involving power plants.

"I think it's important that Congress wrestle with these decisions," McNamee said. "They've been struggling with it for four decades, and I think in the last 15 years, there have been over 70 bills trying to address the issue, and they haven't passed."

As the nation debates its energy choices and climate change, McNamee also emphasized the limits on FERC's role under the Federal Power Act.

"I think the danger is always that — because Congress has chosen not to act — that some people think … then does the administrative state have to act in their stead," he said. "I think that's not appropriate. It is the elected officials that have the authority under our Constitution to make those big policy decisions."

McNamee has at times sparred with Democratic Commissioner Richard Glick on the interpretation of where those boundaries lie. Glick has argued that the majority has flouted the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit's holdings related to climate change in gas project permitting, and conversely that the majority was intruding into states' authority to set their electricity resource mix in some of FERC's recent capacity market decisions.

Maya Weber and Harry Weber are reporters with S&P Global Platts. S&P Global Market Intelligence and S&P Global Platts are owned by S&P Global Inc.