OPINION: Give Brad Crabtree credit for showing up as scheduled at an oil and gas-heavy forum less than three days after his boss dropped a bombshell on the industry

Crabtree, assistant secretary in the US Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy & Carbon Management, quickly found himself trying to reassure an audience at Baker Hughes’ annual meeting in Florence, Italy this week that President Joe Biden’s order to halt new permits for liquefied natural gas projects was just a pause to give regulators time to update the economic and environmental data used to evaluate LNG export schemes.