News that President Donald Trump was considering a Jones Act waiver for LNG carriers headed to certain US ports was not met with enthusiasm from shipping industry lobbying groups.
"We're concerned that it's wasting the White House's time," said Fair Kim, policy director at the Washington DC-based American Maritime Congress.
"We in the industry, we read this and we kind of roll our eyes. We know we have our advocates in Congress because they understand the issues and they understand the disastrous consequences if that law is repealed."
On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported Trump is "seriously considering" and "leaning toward" waiving the requirement that ships in US domestic trade comply with the Jones Act. The law requires them to be built at a domestic yard and fly the US flag, as well as owned and crewed by Americans.
The waiver is supported by Puerto Rico, the oil industry and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow. US Trade Advisor Peter Navarro and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao — whose family owns New York's Foremost Group — reportedly oppose it.
Puerto Rico has been seeking a decade-long Jones Act waiver since December, as the unincorporated US territory looks to natural gas to meet its power needs as it rebuilds after Hurricane Marine devastated the island in 2017.
The northeast, meanwhile, lacks pipelines to deliver natural gas and new construction is controversial. The region has some of the highest energy prices nationally with residential electricity topping $0.20 per kilowatt hour in Connecticut and Massachusett,s and prices well above the $0.12 national average in New York and New Jersey, according to Energy Information Administration (EIA) statistics.
In January, an LNG carrier brought Russian-sourced gas to an import terminal in Boston.
Proponents of the Jones Act argue it is essential to supporting US jobs and national security, while opponents say it makes waterborne transportation prohibitively expensive.
Kim likens waivers to the US allowing foreign truckers on highways without domestic credentials.
"What if I told you, you're riding down I-95 and you're driving a Brazilian-made truck that's built under standards of a foreign country, that's licensed in terms of safety requirements in Mexico, a driver that's Azerbaijani, that has a drivers licence from Azerbaijan ... that's carrying a petroleum product," he said. "Would anyone have an issue with that situation? It's absurd."
The American Maritime Partnership, a group of Jones Act shipowners, accused Trump of favouring "foreign shipping interests over American workers."
"American maritime is the quintessential 'America First' industry and we are confident President Donald Trump, who has championed and supported our American shipyards, mariners and industrial base, would not start us down a path now that would cripple our national security," the partnership's chairman, Matt Woodruff, said in a statement.
