President Obama traveled to New Orleans yesterday to promote American exports as well as the need to strengthen the infrastructure to support them.

It occurs to me there are several areas where the administration could act quickly in ways that serve both purposes and help boost economic growth.

Pushing forward with LNG

For one thing, the administration’s exceedingly slow pace for processing applications for liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities is doing nothing to further the broad trade agenda the White House is calling for.

That could be easily corrected. The administration can and should approve all valid projects currently sitting in the license queue, especially in light of a comprehensive government-sponsored study which determined that increasing LNG trade would be beneficial to the American economy under a range of export scenarios.

American businesses, including ExxonMobil, are in danger of losing out on significant commercial opportunities because of Washington delays. Those lost opportunities would mean that proposed facilities might not get built, which in turn means tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity that would not be realized.

Economists at Wells Fargo noted two weeks ago that the president’s ambitious 2010 goal to double exports by 2015 “is now essentially out of reach.”

If the president wants to put the nation on the path to significant export growth, an obvious place to start is with LNG.

On permitting, timeliness is everything

In New Orleans the president also touted the importance of infrastructure investment. It’s worth noting his administration has pledged to cut timelines in half for major infrastructure projects by modernizing the government permitting process.

While a great idea in theory, the real test is how it plays out in practice. And the evidence so far is mixed.

The Keystone XL pipeline project, for instance, was proposed more than five years ago. It’s been more than two years since the State Department issued its environmental impact statement declaring the project would pose little risk during construction or operation. The White House should give the green light to a project that would create jobs while bringing secure supplies of energy south from Canada.

Prospects look better with regard to several major proposed petrochemical projects for the Gulf Coast, including a multi-billion dollar expansion at our integrated Baytown complex in Texas.

The Baytown project is waiting on air quality and greenhouse gas emissions permits from federal and state agencies, and we are hopeful they will come soon. This expansion is projected to increase regional economic activity by $870 million per year and would ultimately mean an additional 3,800 jobs in local communities.

As I pointed out recently, timely review by regulatory bodies is essential. “The price of delay could be high: billions in added costs, restrained job creation and – ominously – an erosion of America’s new-found competitive advantage.”

“A double win”

There are signs the White House understands what’s at stake. At his press briefing Thursday, spokesman Jay Carney said:

The virtue of investment in infrastructure is that it’s a double win because you get the immediate effect of building and the jobs created from that, and the economic energy and activity created by that, and then the long-term benefit to the economy of improved infrastructure, whether it’s ports or airports or roads or highways or bridges.

He’s absolutely right about that. Let’s hope the administration’s actions match the rhetoric.