[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 1035 Introduced in Senate (IS)]
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119th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. 1035
To prohibit certain exports of natural gas produced or refined in the
United States, and for other purposes.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
March 13, 2025
Mr. Sullivan introduced the following bill; which was read twice and
referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
To prohibit certain exports of natural gas produced or refined in the
United States, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. FINDINGS.
Congress finds that--
(1) natural gas that is produced or refined in the United
States should be exported from domestic terminals given the
economic and national security concerns associated with
exporting that natural gas from countries with corrupt
governments such as Mexico;
(2) Mexico is ranked 140th out of 180 countries in the 2024
Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, with
corruption permeating political and economic segments of
society in Mexico;
(3) according to the 2024 Investment Climate Statement of
the Department of State, ``Mexico's current executive
administration has been said to erode the autonomy and publicly
question the value of specific antitrust and energy regulators
and it has proposed dissolving some of them to cut costs.
Furthermore, reporting suggests that corruption continues to
affect equal enforcement of some regulations.'';
(4) the corruption permeating Mexico is illustrated by the
significant fuel theft in Mexico, which is so rampant that--
(A) Roberto Diaz de Leon, the former President of
the National Fuel Retailers Association in Mexico,
referred to fuel theft networks as main competitors of
gas station owners;
(B) according to Roberto Diaz de Leon, there were
at least 4 illegal fuel stations for every 1 of the
13,000 legal fuel stations in Mexico, as of 2020; and
(C) the former president of Mexico, Andres Manuel
Lopez Obrador, suggested that as much as \4/5\ of fuel
theft is orchestrated by elements of the Mexican state,
and fuel thieves depend on complicit politicians,
police, and insiders at state-controlled oil companies
to make fuel theft possible;
(5) employees of the Mexican state-owned petroleum company,
Pemex, have reportedly been threatened, kidnapped, and tortured
by criminal cartels in Mexico to provide information on
pipelines;
(6) Pemex has faced frequent allegations of corruption,
and, in 2018, Adrian Lajous Vargas, the former chief at Pemex,
stated that corruption was rampant and ``everywhere in all
areas and at all levels of the hierarchy'';
(7) Mexico has centralized governmental power in its
executive branch, including through judicial reforms in
September 2024 that asserted political control over the
judiciary of Mexico by subjecting all judges to replacement
through elections that favor the ruling political party;
(8) the politicization of the judicial branch in Mexico
imperils the principle of impartiality and casts doubt on
whether laws will be applied without favor, contracts will be
honored, and trade disputes will be fairly resolved;
(9) Mexican judicial reforms are expected to result in
changes to regulatory agencies that are critical to upholding
labor, environmental, and trade standards enshrined under the
United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement;
(10) Mexico has also been in violation of its energy
commitments under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement
through violations such as--
(A) granting Mexican state-owned energy companies
priority over private investors, including adopting
several measures to favor Pemex and the state-owned
electrical utility, the Comision Federal de
Electricidad, at the expense of foreign investors, the
United States, and Canada; and
(B) erecting new barriers to foreign trade and
investment; and
(11) the export of natural gas that is produced or
processed in the United States and exported to terminals
located in Mexico--
(A) is not in the national interest of the United
States; and
(B) is a national security and trade concern to the
United States.
SEC. 2. PROHIBITION ON EXPORTS OF NATURAL GAS.
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall export
any natural gas produced or refined in the United States to a foreign
country with the intent of further exporting that natural gas through a
foreign LNG terminal (as defined in section 2 of the Natural Gas Act
(15 U.S.C. 717a)).
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