Thank you, Jordan. As we've heard quite a bit throughout the day, in January the Biden administration announced the pause on permitting for new LNG terminals while it reevaluates its environmental analysis of new LNG projects. Since then, 16 states, including Texas and Louisiana, have challenged the ruling in a lawsuit. Also in January, the EPA granted the state of Louisiana primacy over class VI injection wells, or CCS wells. That ruling is a major step in the growth of carbon capture and sequestration projects in the state. Gifford Briggs, the Gulf Coast regional director of the American Petroleum Institute will join us to share more about the API's position on both the LNG pause the primacy ruling and the impact both could have on the natural gas industry in the Louisiana. Gifford oversees legislative, regulatory, and public affairs activities on behalf of the natural gas and oil industry in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. Prior to joining the API, Gifford served as a president, Louisiana Oil and Gas Association for more then 13 years. Please welcome Gifford Briggs.
Alright. How you all doing? Well that was awfully quiet. I know we're getting close to cocktail hour. I don't want the job of being the person right before cocktail hour, but I have a second to worst presentation time of all.
So welcome. Thank you very much for having me. Gifford Briggs. I'm the Gulf Coast region director for API. And as you heard a little bit before, I formerly was with the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association. So it is great to be back in Louisiana. I live in Tallahassee. They love the oil and gas industry in Florida, but they don't want it anywhere near them. So it's good to be back with friends. So I started — my slides are not showing on the big screen. They're showing for me, which doesn't really help you. Ah, there we go.
So real quick about API. Many of you may know API, but you may not know what we do on both sides, right? My first experience with API was in 1991, working in my dad's piping yard. I was cleaning grease off of a pipe collar with diesel and a wire brush, something that's probably not allowed these days anymore with a fiberglass cast form. But that was my first exposure, because on all of the pipe was a stamp that said American Petroleum Institute. API. And my father explained to me that that was the certification process. API manages a catalog of over 700 industry-wide standards that are applied across the globe. If you buy a can of motor oil, you can look at that motor oil and you'll see a stamp similar to that one to show that it's been made by API — according to API standards. So that's part of what we do in maintaining the catalog of standards for the industry.
The other part of what we do, which is where I am, which is on the government affairs and industry advocacy side, the traditional trade association role. And that's where you see our advertisements on TV, or our President talking on the news. And really, we're out there advocating for the industry. I do state governmental affairs, so I cover the Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama. We're by far the best region of all of the API regions. We're the only one region that really, truly supports the oil and gas industry. The rest of them, they're fighting bad initiatives all around.
So I started my journey in the oil and gas industry from an advocate standpoint in 2007, which seems like a decade ago. And I was introduced to the industry, and LNG, with this photo right here. Now, we're all very familiar with LNG industry today, but not because of this. This is an LNG ship at Cheniere importing LNG. We had a seven year supply of natural gas in 2007, and we were worried, in Louisiana, that we weren't going to have the natural gas necessary to power our country and to power our manufacturing and our chemical industrial complex in South Louisiana, so Cheniere was importing LNG. Right around the time that this picture was taken and this tanker arrived, the Haynesville shale was discovered where we are today. And it revolutionized, really, the global energy industry. And we went from showing this picture to me driving around in my compressed natural gas Ford Explorer Expedition, all over the Haynesville shale, and I had, and even, we even had our own natural gas pump to, to fill up at the office. It's a complete transition of the industry from one, from one situation to the other, because of the great work that the men and women in this room have done and will continue to do for our country and for the world.
So Louisiana has two critical issues that I'm gonna touch base on with you today. Certainly there are others. But these are two very important ones that will go a long way to determining our future. First one is liquefied natural gas. We just talked about the Cheniere import facility that we now know has been turned into an export facility, along with the addition of others. And then something much more on the cutting edge, or sort of still very new, is carbon capture, utilization, and storage. And I will touch a little bit on each of these and some of the challenges that we might be facing.
So on January 26, we're all mostly familiar with it by now, the administration made a shocking decision to no longer allow for the permitting of LNG export facilities. This is a sharp contrast to his previous commitments during the invasion of Ukraine, where the administration said that the United States would rise to meet the needs in support of all of our allies and provide them with the energy that they want. So, one hand, I'm going to give all of the supply — the energy that our European allies need. On the other hand, we're going to stop building facilities that are necessary to do it. When asked — when looking at their reasoning, and this is from their press release, they said that potential energy costs are a reason. Now, earlier I showed you LNG supplies, and then I showed you — or an LNG ship, and then I showed you my compressed natural gas vehicle. My good friends in the Chemical Association were opposed to compressed natural gas for vehicles. Because it was going to drive prices up, right? And here the administration is using the same sort of argument, that we're going to, by allowing the export of natural gas, there's going to be potential energy costs for consumers. However, in a study that was just released a few, maybe about a week ago, we have found that in the past six months, the energy costs are some of the lowest that they have been outside of COVID years. So we solved the problem with the administration. One might think that we will just go ahead and move forward and undo that announcement. I think we all know that that's not coming at least until November 7th.
What does LNG mean? Why is it so important? This is just a snapshot of one company and what their LNG cargoes are meaning to the world. They are exporting natural gas — are turning it into LNG here in Louisiana, more than likely piped down from the Haynesville shale, in the area that we all sit, South Louisiana, and then that is exported all over the world. Over 3,000 cargoes from Cheniere alone with their facility that they have today, or the two facilities they have today, all over the world. And they're not the only company that is doing this. So when we talk about the impact and the importance of LNG, while it means a lot to Louisiana, it is really a global issue if we're going to stop developing these facilities.
But one of the other reasons that we're gonna move away from LNG, or the administration does, right, is because we don't, we don't need to have more fossil fuels and natural gas, and we need to transition away from natural gas into other fuels. But as you can see here, the Haynesville shale, and natural gas, has led to the greatest continued emission reductions in the world here for the United States. As we transition away from coal to natural gas power, because we've gone from a seven year supply to a 200 year or more supply of natural gas, we have seen consistent emissions reductions in the United States, while the rest of the world is seeing continued growth. Because they weren't making the transition away from coal to natural gas, like the United States has. They were adding more coal power plants, and their emissions continued to rise. So we have an opportunity with LNG, not only to support our allies, but to export American environmental progress all over the world. When we — when countries move from coal to natural gas, and consume American-produced LNG, it's good for the environment.
Carbon capture utilization and storage and what does Class VI primacy mean for Louisiana. So, primacy is a new thing. And — or, Class VI wells are a new thing. And it hasn't really happened yet. But it is happening now, and starting to really take off here in Louisiana. So I think it's important to have a little bit of an education real quick for those of you that might not be familiar with it. The underground injection program that is managed by EPA manages six classes of wells. This room, very familiar with one of them. And that's Class II wells. We have been using Class II wells and EOR [Enhanced Oil Recovery] in this industry for decades. We've actually been taking carbon dioxide, capturing it, injecting it in the ground, and producing oil for decades. There are fields in South Louisiana, South Texas, and North Louisiana and Mississippi, and really many places across the country where this has been happening. And you know what? No one's cared. We take CO2, we produce more oil, we haven't had anybody really out there complaining.
Now, we've got Class VI wells, where we're taking the CO2 and putting it in the ground, but not taking oil out — which seems like that would be a lot easier process than what the Class II wells is — and all of a sudden, we've got people across the country up in arms. And I say this because we're seeing, we're seeing concern, or we're seeing people raise their objections in the Midwest, we're seeing it in Louisiana, we've certainly seen it in Texas, and other places. And what's interesting is, is that there's different sides of the spectrum, the political spectrum, in their objections. You have some people on the, on the very far progressive, far left, the environmental groups, that are opposed to Class VI wells, not Class II wells, just Class VI wells now, because they prolong the life of the oil and gas industry. Now, four or five years ago, the environmentalist were demanding that industry capture CO2 and inject it safely stored underground. And then there's, there are others on the far right that are equally opposed to Class VI wells because they believe that Class VI wells are based on the premise that climate change is real. And since they don't believe climate change is real, industry should not be spending their dollars. So that gives you just some of the, some of the political dynamics that we're dealing with in this space.
But the UIC program, in and of itself, was designed by EPA to give to the states, because we all know that the federal government isn't necessarily the most efficient organization in order to get permits. And so they designed the UIC program for the states to take over for each of these classes of wells. And so we talk about primacy, that is the EPA granting the authority to the states to manage that program. And you can get primacy for one class of well, or you can get primacy for all six classes of wells. In order to get primacy, you must demonstrate to the federal government that your regulations, standards, and procedures are every bit or more stringent than that of the EPA. So EPA has a set of rules for the UIC program. As a state, you have to adopt those rules as they are, or you have to adopt rules that are more stringent. In order to get primacy, a state has to demonstrate those things. So this a thing, this is a chart from the — and you're not gonna be able to read it — but this is a chart that's provided by the [Louisiana] Office of Conservation to, to show people the process that they had to go through in order to get primacy. They started in March of 2020 to begin the conversation with EPA about getting primacy. This doesn't include much of the legislative rulemake — or law that had to be passed, those statutory changes that had to be made by the legislature prior to this even happening. This entire process took three and a half years for the state, for just for Louisiana, to be able to get primacy. And multiple times throughout this process they were told that the decision was imminent. And really, it came down to just about the last week while Governor Edwards was in office that we were able to get primacy, and something that Governor Edwards was very proud of.
This is the same process that exists for permits. If it takes this long to get primacy, it takes just as long, if not longer, for the EPA to grant permits, because the EPA was never set up to grant permits. They were set up, or at least in the UIC program, they were set up in order to take primacy and hand it off to the states. So permits are flooding into the EPA right now, because there aren't very many states that have primacy. So if you want to drill a Class VI well and do a CO2 injection project, sequestration project, in the state of Texas right now, you have no choice but to submit your permit application to the federal government. And so applications are flying in and no permits are being issued. Only recently, in the past two months, has the, has the EPA granted really any permit beyond the two that they had originally issued years ago for Illinois for two very small CO2 injection facilities.
One of the reasons that permitting, or one of the reasons that the states having primacy, why is it so important? Obviously, the permitting timelines, everybody in this industry understands, right? It's something that, a permit that takes two years isn't feasible. We need, we need permits that are going to take much less time. So the timelining is key. But the other areas are much more important. Local expertise is critical. We don't need people in Washington deciding whether or not the geology in Louisiana is, is suitable for a CO2 project. Because the geologists in the Office of Conservation in Louisiana, who've been doing permitting for oil and gas wells understand the geology of our state better than anybody else does. And so that local expertise is critical to ensuring the safety of these projects. Response time, right? If there is, if there's a question by a member of the public, or a question by a member of law enforcement, or a legislator, or an issue that pops up, or a change that needs to be made in order to adapt to the changing geology, we can get a much quicker response and more flexibility from our local, our local state agencies. Obviously cost savings. Much less expensive to go get a permit from your state regulatory body than it is the federal government. And then last thing, I would argue that this one is probably the most important, is one that our industry does well sometimes, and maybe not as well as others, is community engagement. And we have seen, in Louisiana, with the rush of projects around CCS, we have seen really good examples of community engagement, or companies that go on in, they talk to the people, the neighborhoods, and the communities, and the elected officials that are going to be in and around the project and they're educating them. Because nobody understands what CCS is. We're not talking about drilling a well that people are, are familiar with. We're talking about taking CO2 out of the air and putting it into the ground. And people don't understand it the way that we do. And so companies that have gone in and educated communities really well have seen success, and they have seen support for their projects. Other projects haven't done that. And they show up, and they have a public hearing, and they haven't educated the public, and they haven't talked with the elected officials, and they haven't talked to all the people that will be impacted. And then those communities are rising up against the industry. And so it's important for these communities to be able to share their opinion, and share their pain, and voice their concerns with the regulators. And if it's in Washington, it's very difficult for these communities to be able to do that. And so having the ability for our communities to interact with the regulators is critical.
So where, what's the landscape of primacy look like? And why is it such a big deal for Louisiana? So, North Dakota and Wyoming, they are the two states that have had privacy the longest. So they were smart. They got primacy before people were focused on primacy. And so when North Dakota and Wyoming went through their primacy application, I think there was a total of 20 comments between both of their applications. Louisiana now has primacy. When Louisiana went through their primacy application, there were more than 15,000 comments that were submitted in the EPA record, including a national campaign waged against Louisiana getting primacy, with people from all 50 states writing in to oppose Louisiana's securing primacy from the federal government.
Other states are now moving forward. I cover Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama. We are actively looking at, they're actively looking at getting primacy in those states, so that they can bring their expertise to their geology. They can start working with, with industry and the communities, talking about building out. But other states as well, Texas and West Virginia, they've submitted their applications for primacy. Now just because you get primacy doesn't mean that all of a sudden you get to have CCS projects. It's not quite the way that it works. But primacy is a critical step along the way. But you can see, you have a large number of states where people are looking at this opportunity and saying, "Hey, we can capture emissions. We can reduce emissions. We can do it safely here. And we know that we're better at doing it than the federal government is."
And I talked about primacy not being the only thing. Legislative action is absolutely required in order to be able to have CCS projects. Even if you get a permit from the federal government, that doesn't entitle you, or give you the ability to have a CCS project. Because we have to get the pore space that the CO2 is going to be injected into. Well, who runs the pore space? Some think the landowners do. The are mineral owners that certainly think they do, or they want to figure out how they can get a, have a role in it. How do we do unitization? We're not talking about 640 acre, 1280 acre units, like we once were with the oil and gas industry, right? I was here at the Haynesville shale, we started at 640 and went to 1280. We're talking about 30, 40, 50 hundred thousand acre units for CCS. How is everybody getting paid? We have multiple injection facilities, how is that going to work out? What about liability, and long term trust fund establishment? We're gonna operate this for 25 years, I don't want it to be on my books indefinitely as a liability. How do we transfer that liability over to the state, much in the way that somewhat happens through a plug and abandonment program? These are a few of the issues that must be resolved at the state level. Louisiana was ahead of the curve and got it done. Alabama has legislation that they're considering right now. Pennsylvania and Ohio are looking at it, and they're having some resilience. Texas isn't in legislative session this year, but last year, their efforts weren't even, weren't successful, and they weren't able to get the votes they needed to move that forward.
So what we're talking about, CCS is a real thing. And it is very much a real thing. There are real challenges and obstacles that exist. And why Louisiana is so well positioned, is because they have primacy. They have the regulatory body in place. You've got an industry that is robust. You have the largest CO2 pipeline that Denbury built, that goes from Jackson Hole in — Jackson in Mississippi, all the way down to Beaumont. And you got tons of industry that is ready to capture their emissions and inject them underground. And Louisiana has a lead. It's not often that Louisiana gets to sort of laugh at Texas, right? I spend a lot of time working in oil and gas industry. We spend a lot of time having conversations like why can't we be more like Texas? Well, here's an opportunity for Louisiana. For Texas to be saying, why can't we be more like Louisiana? Because what's going to happen is over the next three or four years, projects are going to start being built with Louisiana. It's going to be our service companies, it's going to be our, our people, our workforce, our expertise is going to be deployed here. And then when Texas finally gets around to it, or Arkansas, or Alabama, or these other states, once again, just like we did with the Haynesville shale years ago, our expertise that we build here by being first, we're going to be able to capitalize that, on that, in other states around the country.
So Louisiana's the energy state. This is something that, when I was at LOGA, we talked about all the time. We used to show a map of pipelines in the United States. I'm sure you've all seen it, right? The pipeline map of our country runs through Louisiana. It's like the aorta of the heart, right? All of the energy flows, much of the energy our country consumes, flows through Louisiana, and now, does it not only flow through Louisiana, it goes out across the world. We have the opportunity to be the global leader in LNG. We have the opportunity to be the global leader in CCS, here in this great state of Louisiana. And I think that we are poised to do it. And there's so much opportunity for everyone in all sectors of the industry to be able to take advantage of it, and to work here in Louisiana.
And so I'm gonna finish on a little bit of a different note. Because there is tremendous investment in Louisiana. CCS along with additional numbers that we're seeing are $20 billion in projects that are, that are in development, ready to be implemented, in the process of permitting across Louisiana, for CCS alone. And that doesn't include the LNG projects, some that are already permitted, that are continuing to be done, and others that are in the permitting pipeline, that, most likely, when the election is over, will be allowed to resume once again. But in order to do that, we're going to have to do a lot more with our supply chain. We're gonna have to have a lot of companies grow from small to medium to big very quickly. And this is something that API and our member companies recognize, and our member companies, at the CEO, at the highest level, have tasked us with addressing. And so we have a program that we do with Blue Wave out of Houston, Texas, which is a supplier development program. Now Woodside Energy just announced their graduation of their first lap, where they put all of their suppliers from this Blue Wave program. And Blue Wave was founded by two former oil and gas people that were in the procurement side for Exxon. Our focus at API is for minority-owned businesses to participate in the program. We want to help these companies grow from 1 million in sales to 20 million in sales, because we know that our industry is going to need their help meeting the challenges that we're going to face. This program is 100% free. API bears the cost of this program for all those participants. It's a six month intensive program at the CEO level. There's two in-person meetings and there's six virtual meetings. And what happens — or six months of virtual meetings, and what happens is we work with each company and we go through seven pillars. Pillars like cybersecurity, ESG, your financial records, to make sure that you don't have gaps that are going to prevent you from doing business with our industry. Because if you don't have a cybersecurity policy, and you respond to an RFP with Exxon, you're not getting a call back. And they might not tell you why, because they're too busy going through what they should do. So we help you identify, you don't have a cybersecurity policy. That's one step. The next step is we help you catalog, and Blue Wave has, we help find a cybersecurity policy that works for you, and help you implement it. In our first two classes of 48 businesses, we identified 4,500 gaps across these seven pillars. And we helped them close 3,900 hundred of them. It's important for me to say here, because we've only done it in Houston. But API has recognized that Louisiana has a very unique challenge ahead of us with all of this deployment of CCS that we're about to see, the growth in LNG space, and we're, we're bringing this class to Louisiana right now. I can spend 30 more minutes talking about this program and laying out more details, but I don't have time to do that. But I do want to share with you, because if you know a minority-owned business, it can be any, across any lines, it could be racial, it could be gender, it could be veteran-owned, it could be disability. If you know someone that this program might benefit, please come see me. Come see me after. Let's talk about it. I've got my contact information here. And we would love to talk to 'em. Again, it's a free program. We have information sessions. And it's going to help our industry become better across all levels. So thank you very much. I've got a minute and 47 seconds left. I don't think that's gonna be enough time for questions. But I will stick around and be out there on the floor and answer any questions you might have, whether it's about CCS, it's about LNG, or if it's about our supplier diversity program. Thank you all very much.
[Unintelligible] Thank you for that. Yeah, we don't have time for questions. So I want to thank you for the presentation. I know you'll be out making the rounds, so if you have anything else you have to address with him, please do. In the meantime, I'd like to welcome back my colleague to the stage, Nissa Darbonne.
