Policy choices can have a major impact on project development and regulatory certainty is a key factor in the recent growth in the LNG industry, Tala Goudarzi, a Torridon Group partner and former Department of Energy (DOE) official, said during a fireside chat with RBN President and CEO David Braziel at RBN’s GasCon 2026 conference in Houston.
Goudarzi, who served as Acting Assistant Secretary and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Office of Fossil Energy at the DOE, led initiatives that expanded U.S. LNG exports, including lifting the Biden administration’s pause on LNG exports, which she said slowed the industry’s development and was based on “politicized data.”
“The overpoliticization of the industry is just something that we can’t do,” she said. “Energy is not political.”
Goudarzi emphasized that regulatory certainty was a key factor in the industry’s future success.
“Regulators and our policymakers shouldn’t stand in the way of American progress,” she said.
With LNG export capacity expected to increase sharply over the next few years, topping 30 Bcf/d by 2030 (see chart below), there has been some concern that the global LNG market will become oversaturated, but Goudarzi said that was not likely to happen.
“There’s been no evidence to suggest that there’s an oversupply in the market,” she said. “All data points to the fact that demand is certainly going up and there is no data to suggest that natural gas will have no place to go globally.”
