Natural-Gas Industry Gets Boost as Biden Shifts Stance

The announcement came a day after Democrats on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission backtracked on new environmental policies, suspending implementation of heightened requirements on reviews that industry officials and Republicans said would impede gas-pipeline development.

Shares of large U.S. natural-gas companies rose 9% on average Friday as major stock indexes were mixed. Shares of

EQT Corp.

EQT 11.68%

and

Southwestern Energy Co.

SWN 15.63%

, two large producers, shot up to close about 12% and 16% higher.

Cheniere Energy Inc.,

LNG 5.46%

the top U.S. exporter, was up about 5.5%. Tellurian Inc., which is seeking financing for an LNG project, soared 21%.

The gas industry’s prospects have been a concern among the sector’s executives because of Mr. Biden’s stance against fossil fuels. But the president has softened some of his positions in the wake of rising energy costs, which have been driven in part by the economic rebound from Covid-19, and more recently by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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The White House pivot has also put the U.S. and its vast oil and gas reserves in shale rock back at the center of a global scramble for energy resources as a bulwark against petrostates and authoritarian regimes. The U.S. is the world’s largest oil and gas producer.

Daniel Yergin,

the vice chairman of S&P Global and a noted oil-industry historian, called recent developments “a huge turn.”

“There’s a recognition now that shale—and particularly LNG—is a real geopolitical asset,” Mr. Yergin said.

Mr. Biden and his advisers have said they are still committed to ending the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, including gas, and will continue to fund renewable energy as part of their work with European allies. But they also acknowledged the need to deal with the reliance that exists today.

“While gas is still a substantial part of the energy mix, we want to make sure that the Europeans do not have to source that gas from Russia,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Friday.

Toby Rice,

chief executive of top U.S. natural-gas producer EQT, said the Biden administration’s shift is an extremely encouraging political signal that natural gas will play a key role in the world’s future energy mix.

Mr. Rice said the U.S. could sharply increase LNG exports over time if companies build thousands of miles of new pipelines and billions worth of new LNG facilities. But unleashing that will require broader support for that infrastructure and speeding up the sluggish permitting process, he said.

“The problem we face is it takes longer to permit something than it takes us to build it,” Mr. Rice said. “The faster we move, the faster we move toward achieving our climate goals and providing energy security for people around the world.”

Shippers of LNG have already sent most U.S. cargoes to European destinations this year, as prices have skyrocketed following Russia’s invasion. American exporters are moving cargoes as fast as physically possible and are on pace to send a record 11.4 billion cubic feet a day of LNG overseas this month, with more than 60% bound for Europe, according to market intelligence firm Kpler.

FERC has approved 13 LNG facilities across the U.S. that have remained unbuilt with the combined capacity to export about 25 billion cubic feet each day, according to FERC’s February update. Companies haven’t begun construction on those largely because they haven’t yet gathered enough supply agreements with customers overseas to finance the construction of those facilities.

Part of the arrangement between the U.S. and Europe is to ensure that European countries also come through to show they can take more U.S. gas. They are to build out their infrastructure to accept up to 50 billion cubic meters of additional U.S. supply a year between now and 2030, Mr. Sullivan said.

Before the Russian invasion, Biden administration officials had been hesitant about putting U.S. development money into fossil-fuel projects abroad.

Environmentalists and climate advocates for poor countries had pushed the administration to focus its spending on clean energy to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions at the rapid rate required to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change.

“New LNG infrastructure is a death sentence for the planet,” said Collin Rees, the U.S. program manager at Oil Change International, a group that advocates for renewable energy. “It would take years to build and would operate for decades, far beyond a timeline compatible with meeting climate goals.”

Next week, Biden officials and U.S. energy executives from

ConocoPhillips,

Sempra,

Tellurian and others will meet in Berlin with German counterparts at the U.S. Embassy to discuss getting more American gas to Germany.

More than half of Germany’s gas imports have come from Russia, but following the invasion of Ukraine, German officials nixed the Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline running more than 700 miles from Russia and signaled support for the construction of two LNG import facilities. It currently has no LNG import plants.

“If you’re a policy maker around the world today, you’re worried about energy security, you’re worried about carbon footprint and you’re worried about what your constituents are paying to supply energy for themselves,” said Domenic Dell’Osso Jr., chief executive of shale company

Chesapeake Energy Corp.

CHK 2.67%

Mr. Dell’Osso said it is encouraging to see the Biden administration and European governments recognize that U.S. natural gas is needed. Chesapeake, he added, is increasing natural-gas production 10% this year in the Haynesville Shale of Louisiana, close to export facilities and is open to opportunities to put more gas into international markets.

—Catherine Lucey contributed to this article.

Write to Timothy Puko at tim.puko@wsj.com and Collin Eaton at collin.eaton@wsj.com