Trump pushes U.S. LNG projects forward

The Trump administration’s efforts to accelerate LNG exports have begun to benefit several projects on the U.S. Gulf Coast. The U.S. gas industry is celebrating, but community groups living near the terminals harshly criticised the moves and predict more health and environmental harms will be inflicted on their communities.

On March 18th, a federal court decided to give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission a chance to redo its environmental analysis of Rio Grande LNG and Texas LNG, and the court rolled back its previous decision to scrap the authorisation entirely.

The decision came in response to a request from the energy companies, which asked the court to toss out the prior decision in light of favourable executive orders from President Trump. Those orders, signed in January, called on federal agencies to scrap required evaluations of environmental justice impacts.

FERC will now continue its supplemental environmental impact statement on the two LNG projects in Brownsville, Texas, near the border with Mexico. In all likelihood, those documents will be issued later this year and the construction authorisations will be reaffirmed. In other words, the latest court decision likely reduces the odds of extensive delays for NextDecade’s Rio Grande LNG, which is currently under construction. Texas LNG, backed by asset management firm Glenfarne, aims to announce an FID by the end of the year.

On March 19th, the U.S. Department of Energy approved a permit for Venture Global’s CP2 project in southwestern Louisiana, allowing the project to export to countries that don’t have a free-trade agreement with the U.S. That permit had been delayed by the Biden administration’s permitting pause.

“CP2 LNG is a vital project for the U.S. economy, balance of trade, and global energy security. We are grateful for the Trump Administration’s return to regular order and regulatory certainty that will allow us to further expand U.S. LNG exports, which have consistently been found to be in the public interest across multiple Administrations,” Venture Global CEO Mike Sabel said in a statement.

Southwestern Louisiana is already inundated with petrochemical plants, refineries, and LNG export terminals. As Gas Outlook reported, the concentration of LNG in Cameron Parish, Louisiana is threatening to kill off the commercial fishing industry. The LNG plants are also expanding on a coastline that is rapidly receding because of climate change.

“The decision to authorize the CP2 LNG facility is a direct threat to our health and safety. We cannot allow our community to become a sacrifice zone for corporate interests,” Roishetta Ozane, CEO of the Vessel Project of Louisiana, an NGO, said in a statement.

The project is not a done deal yet. The 15-million-tonne CP2 terminal has contracts with buyers for about 9.75 mtpa of its capacity, and still has some work to do to line up buyers for the remainder. Reuters reported that Venture Global is trying to renegotiate prices with buyers, seeking higher rates to cover for the project’s increasing costs.

Venture Global’s stock price crashed in early March, after the company revealed that its Plaquemines LNG terminal in southeastern Louisiana was suffering from higher-than-expected costs.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is also heavily supporting the Alaska LNG project, and is pressuring the Japanese government to sign contracts to take cargoes from the terminal. Left for dead by the state and by its prior owners, including ExxonMobil and BP, the project now is showing signs of life. Glenfarne, which is also backing Texas LNG, purchased the Alaska LNG project last year and is hoping to revive it and move it forward.

At CERAWeek in Houston in mid-March, Glenfarne CEO Brendan Duval said he was planning a “road show” in Asia in late March, an effort to gauge customer interest in Japan, Korea, and southeast Asia.

He said the $50 billion project is “daunting,” but that the U.S. government and the government of Alaska were offering tons of incentives. He positioned Alaska LNG as critical to the Trump administration’s geopolitical goals in the Asia-Pacific. LNG is really important, “if we want to dominate that area from a military standpoint,” Duval said.

Also at CERAWeek, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced the approval of Delfin LNG, a floating terminal off the coast of Louisiana. A few weeks earlier, DOE approved an export permit for Commonwealth LNG. “President Trump has outlined a bold agenda for unleashing American energy dominance, and restoring regular order on U.S. LNG export permits is critical for meeting this commitment to the American people,” Secretary Wright said at the time.

The administration’s efforts were welcome news for gas executives at the conference. At the same time, industry leaders quietly warned that Trump’s tariffs on steel could drive up the costs of building new projects. But given the administration’s aggressive campaign of environmental deregulation, the industry is reluctant to criticise him too loudly. The fallout on the economics of LNG from the steel tariffs, and how that might impact project development, remains to be seen.

But LNG plants continue to proliferate in areas of the Gulf Coast that are already homes to big clusters of heavy industry, compounding the effects of pollution and the negative impacts on human health.

“LNG export terminals are destroying people’s lives, health, and communities while LNG facilities destroy the environment, all for greed,” Christopher Basaldú, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, a Brownsville, Texas-based NGO, said in a statement. “The DoE must stop facilitating the LNG export buildout. We don’t need or want any new LNG export terminals, and we want those already under construction stopped and cancelled.”