[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 5286 Introduced in Senate (IS)]
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118th CONGRESS
2d Session
S. 5286
To prohibit certain exports of natural gas produced or refined in the
United States, and for other purposes.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
September 25, 2024
Mr. Sullivan introduced the following bill; which was read twice and
referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
To prohibit certain exports of natural gas produced or refined in the
United States, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. FINDINGS.
Congress finds that--
(1) natural gas that is produced or refined in the United
States should be exported from domestic terminals given the
economic and national security concerns associated with
exporting that natural gas from countries with corrupt
governments such as Mexico;
(2) Mexico is ranked 126th out of 180 countries in the 2023
Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, with
corruption permeating political and economic segments of
society in Mexico;
(3) according to the 2023 Investment Climate Statement of
the Department of State, ``Mexico's current executive
administration has eroded the autonomy and publicly questioned
the value of specific antitrust and energy regulators and has
proposed dissolving some of them to cut costs. Furthermore,
corruption continues to affect equal enforcement of some
regulations.'';
(4) the corruption permeating Mexico is illustrated by the
significant fuel theft in Mexico, which is so rampant that--
(A) Roberto Diaz de Leon, the President of the
National Fuel Retailers Association in Mexico, referred
to fuel theft networks as main competitors of gas
station owners;
(B) according to Roberto Diaz de Leon, there were
at least 4 illegal fuel stations for every 1 of the
13,000 legal fuel stations in Mexico, as of 2020; and
(C) the president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez
Obrador, has suggested that as much as \4/5\ of fuel
theft is orchestrated by elements of the Mexican state,
and fuel thieves depend on complicit politicians,
police, and insiders at state-controlled oil companies
to make fuel theft possible;
(5) employees of the Mexican state-owned petroleum company,
Pemex, have reportedly been threatened, kidnapped, and tortured
by criminal cartels in Mexico to provide information on
pipelines;
(6) Pemex has faced frequent allegations of corruption,
and, in 2018, Adrian Lajous Vargas, the former chief at Pemex,
stated that corruption was rampant and ``everywhere in all
areas and at all levels of the hierarchy'';
(7) Mexico has centralized governmental power in its
executive branch, including through judicial reforms in
September 2024 that asserted political control over the
judiciary of Mexico by subjecting all judges to replacement
through elections that favor the ruling political party;
(8) the politicization of the judicial branch in Mexico
imperils the principle of impartiality and casts doubt on
whether laws will be applied without favor, contracts will be
honored, and trade disputes will be fairly resolved;
(9) Mexican judicial reforms are expected to result in
changes to regulatory agencies that are critical to upholding
labor, environmental, and trade standards enshrined under the
United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement;
(10) Mexico has also been in violation of its energy
commitments under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement
through violations such as--
(A) granting Mexican state-owned energy companies
priority over private investors, including adopting
several measures to favor Pemex and the state-owned
electrical utility, the Comision Federal de
Electricidad, at the expense of foreign investors, the
United States, and Canada; and
(B) erecting new barriers to foreign trade and
investment; and
(11) the export of natural gas that is produced or refined
in the United States and exported to terminals located in
Mexico--
(A) is not in the national interest of the United
States; and
(B) is a national security and trade concern to the
United States.
SEC. 2. PROHIBITION ON EXPORTS OF NATURAL GAS.
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall export
any natural gas produced or refined in the United States to a foreign
country with the intent of further exporting that natural gas through a
foreign LNG terminal (as defined in section 2 of the Natural Gas Act
(15 U.S.C. 717a)).
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