Fuel Fix writes that “a decades-old decision by the Commerce Department to abandon congressionally mandated restrictions on natural gas exports could jeopardize current plans to sell the fossil fuel overseas, Sen. Ed Markey charged Monday.”  

“Although Congress passed a law in 1975 directing the government to bar exports of U.S. oil and natural gas, the Commerce Department never got further than crude. And when Commerce formally delegated gas export issues to the then one-year-old Energy Department in 1978, it did so citing a much older 1938 law and the regulations born under it — without any mention of the newer 1975 mandate.”  

“’For 39 years, it appears that every single administration has failed to discharge its responsibility to conduct a similar rule making prohibiting the export of natural gas, despite the clear statutory requirement to do so,’ Markey said in a letter to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.