The liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry has already made its mark for the worse in Southwest Louisiana and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast. Three projects—two export terminals and a more than 137-mile-long pipeline—now threaten Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. A new report from the Sierra Club and Rainforest Action Network lays bare the cost of constructing and opening Texas LNG’s more than 625-acre facility, Rio Grande LNG’s massive 984-acre terminal, and the Rio Bravo pipeline.
According to the report, the two LNG terminals alone would annually release the equivalent in greenhouse gas emissions of 40.4 million cars. NextDecade, the company behind Rio Grande LNG, insists its facility will be much less environmentally damaging due to its proposed carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. But even the company’s own website only boasts the capture and storage of “more than 5 million metric tonnes of CO2 per year, equivalent to removing more than one million vehicles from the road annually.”
CCS historically hasn’t had a whole lot of success and even Exxon admitted the technology isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Even worse, CCS poses a proven danger to communities, as with the Denbury pipeline rupture in Mississippi in 2020, which poisoned countless community members. The buildout for both terminals and the LNG pipeline itself would be devastating to the communities in the Rio Grande Valley and an insult to the Indigenous folks who’ve already faced threats from the oil and gas industry.
Texas LNG’s footprint alone threatens burial sites and sacred ground deemed irreplaceable by the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe—a tribe that the company didn’t even bother to consult with when soliciting feedback for its facility. Judging by Tribal Chairman Juan Mancias’ statement in a press release, seemingly no one with a stake in either Rio Grande LNG or Texas LNG has come forward to talk with Carrizo Comecrudo members:
“The banks, regulatory agencies, and companies have never consulted with the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas about pushing the Rio Grande LNG and Texas LNG projects on our Native lands. LNG exports are another cycle of colonization that our Tribal members are fighting against. Rio Grande LNG and Texas LNG are invading the community, would desecrate our lands, bulldoze sacred sites, and harm our tribal members’ health and safety and turn the area into a sacrifice zone.”
Though the LNG projects are years behind schedule, all that is standing in the way of making the Rio Grande LNG and Texas LNG terminals and the Rio Bravo pipeline a reality is a Final Investment Decision (FID)—a crucial point in which a company chooses to move forward with a project or not. Frontline communities, organizations like the Sierra Club and Rainforest Action Network, and climate activists are calling on financial institutions to withhold funding.
It’s not just a bad investment given the rapid acceleration of renewable development compared with the slump in attracting new talent to the oil and gas industry: Climate groups see a reputational risk for anyone willing to spend on a project that goes against established net-zero goals like the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero by 2050 report. The Sierra Club and Rainforest Action Network is also seeking a more explicit buy-in from the federal government on climate-risk rules proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as the consideration of environmental justice concerns related to projects like the planned LNG build outs in the Rio Grande Valley.
“With the international scientific community and agencies calling for no fossil fuel expansion, there isn’t a need for these terminals. LNG and fracked gas is not a bridge or transition fuel,” Rainforest Action Network senior campaigner Ruth Breech said in a press release. “No bank or financial institution has any business in expanding fossil fuels, especially not in sacred burial sites or in environmental justice communities.”