119-s1035

[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 1035 Introduced in Senate

    (IS) ]

<DOC>

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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