This column by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) first appeared in the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association Industry Report on June 10, 2025.

PresidentBiden let TikTok teens, climate change zealots, and other members of the Democratic Party dictate American energy policy for four years. The results were not good.

The Biden administration left the American people with 29% higher electricity bills, a depleted strategic national fuel reserve, and a mountain of bureaucratic red tape that made it difficult for energy producers to produce energy and create good-paying jobs. In 2024 alone, Louisiana families had to pay nearly $1,000 more to keep their lights on and gas tanks full.

Fortunately, the American people voted to restore common sense in Washington. President Trump and my conservative colleagues in Congress are working to restore America’s global energy dominance. To do this, we must first clean up the mess left by the Biden administration — and President Trump and his team are off to a great start.

On day one, President Trump declared a National Energy Emergency. This was a critical step because the Biden administration approved roughly half as many oil and natural gas permits as the first Trump administration. Under President Biden’s watch, the backlog of permit requests exceeded 5,400. President Trump’s declaration will temporarily suspend some goofy environmental regulations to fast-track the approval process.

President Trump also lifted the Biden administration’s disastrous ban on new liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminals. President Biden had decided to "pause" all new LNG export terminals after a TikTok influencer convinced him that it was bad to export safe, affordable LNG from Louisiana to our allies in Europe and the Pacific. This decision was one of many reasons why Russia exported a record-breaking amount of LNG to the European Union during President Biden’s time in office.

The Biden administration evidently preferred that our friends in Europe buy their natural gas from the Kremlin instead of Louisiana. Stupid should hurt more.

In addition to clearing harmful regulations, the Trump administration has also begun to claw back some of the money the Biden administration doled out to its friends under the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, for example, uncovered a $2 billion grant to a non-profit organization with ties to Democratic activist Stacey Abrams. The organization sought out the $2 billion grant to discourage families from buying gas stoves despite having no record of success and only $100 in its bank account. Zeldin has pledged to retrieve as much as $20 billion in similar grants. Congress has also stepped up to unwind some of President Biden’s most harmful policies by issuing joint resolutions of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The CRA is a tool Congress can use to immediately eliminate the Biden administration’s formal rules that could otherwise take months or years for the Trump administration to replace on its own.

I introduced a joint resolution of disapproval under the CRA to scrap a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management rule that required oil and gas producers in the Gulf of America to x-ray the seabed and submit archaeological reports to the federal government before drilling or laying pipelines even though the Gulf had already been x-rayed once.

The Gulf is one of the most mapped seabeds in the world. Still, the Biden administration forced small and independent operators to rescan the area before each new drill to search for missing shipwrecks, though over 4,000 shipwrecks have been found.

The purpose of this regulation was to drive up costs and slow down production for the mom-and-pop operators who can’t afford to spend thousands of dollars recreating maps that already exist. It was a waste of time and money, and President Trump agreed. He signed my resolution into law to wipe this harmful rule off the books. It is just the first of many regulatory reversals Congress would send his way.

As one of the nation’s energy leaders, Louisiana suffered significantly under President Biden’s anti-energy agenda. With President Trump in office, though, Louisiana is set to see energy production like we have never seen before.

President Trump issued his administration’s very first LNG export terminal permit in Cameron Parish. These new facilities — some of which the Biden administration tried to crush with its permit pause — will bring new jobs and investment to communities throughout southeast Louisiana. Additionally, these new terminals will make it much easier to continue exporting LNG to our friends and allies around the world so they can stop relying on countries that hate us to power their cities.

Louisiana will also be home to the National Center of Excellence for LNG Safety. The Center — which I created — will provide students with opportunities to get hands-on experience with industrial-grade LNG equipment. The Center will also be a hub for research and development within the LNG sector. Generations of Louisianians will be able to begin their careers in LNG by learning how to work safely in the new jobs that will develop under President Trump’s pro-energy agenda.

As Chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Energy and Water Development, I’m working to find new ways to keep Louisiana’s energy production momentum going.

One of my top priorities is to establish mandatory oil and gas leasing thresholds so that future administrations cannot follow the Biden administration’s lead by refusing to distribute the permits Congress authorized. President Biden chose to listen to unelected TikTok influencers when deciding how many permits to approve. We need future presidents to listen to Congress instead.

Congress should also consider ways in which the U.S. can increase energy production on public lands. For the past few decades, the Department of the Interior recovered just 73 cents of every dollar invested in America’s federal lands, yet these public lands contain trillions of dollars of minerals beneath the surface. We are smart enough to protect our federal lands and tap their energy potential at the same time.

Proactive state governments have recovered an average of $14.51 for each dollar invested in public lands, and there is no reason why the federal government should not be able to do the same for the American people. Wise management of America’s public lands could help the federal government pay down its $36 trillion national debt.

Congress has several other tools it can use to unleash U.S. energy production to benefit the American people, including simplifying the permitting process and easing overbearing environmental regulations that disadvantaged oil and gas energy producers. If Congress makes these changes, it can protect the American energy sector for generations.

As common sense makes a comeback in Washington, energy dominance is on the horizon. I’m proud that Louisiana will continue to be a leader in oil and gas production as America enters a new era of prosperity and security.