Remember freedom fries?

The U.S. Department of Energy has apparently taken that rebranding concept one step further, referring to natural gas as “freedom gas” and “molecules of U.S. freedom” in a press release Wednesday.

The terms popped up in a statement announcing the approval of additional liquefied natural gas exports from a facility in Texas.

“Increasing export capacity from the Freeport LNG project is critical to spreading freedom gas throughout the world,” U.S. Under Secretary of Energy Mark W. Menezes was quoted as saying.

“I am pleased that the Department of Energy is doing what it can to promote an efficient regulatory system that allows for molecules of U.S. freedom to be exported to the world,” added a second official, Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Steven Winberg.

The apparent rebranding puzzled many, and became the target of mockery online.

“’Spreading freedom gas’ sounds like what happens when you’re newly single and suddenly have the apartment to yourself,” Slate wrote, in one of the more tasteful fart jokes that the term inspired.

“This has to be a joke,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democratic presidential candidate, said in a pair of tweets. “Freedom gas? Freedom is generally good, but freedom from glaciers, freedom from clean air, freedom from healthy forests that aren’t on fire, and freedom from the world we know and cherish is not what we seek.”

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a scientific advocacy group, natural gas produces fewer global-warming emissions than coal or oil, but the extraction and transportation of natural gas results in the leakage of methane, a gas that is significantly worse for global warming than CO2 — diminishing natural gas’s environmental advantages over the long run.

The Trump administration has dismissed warnings of climate change and rolled back numerous environmental restrictions, and earlier this week the New York Times reported the White House was preparing a stepped-up attack on climate science.

The term “freedom gas” apparently sprouted from a press conference in Brussels earlier this month with Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who described U.S. natural gas exports to Europe as “a form of freedom.” When a reporter asked, apparently jokingly, if “freedom gas” would be a fair way to describe it, Perry agreed. “Yes, I think you may be correct in your observation,” he said, according to a May 7 report by European news agency EurActiv.

The Department of Energy did not immediately respond to an email asking if that is what it will now officially call natural gas in future references.