Breaking News: Frontline Groups Win Pause on Polluting Gas Export Facilities
This morning, President Biden announced that his Administration will “heed the calls of young people and frontline communities who are using their voices to demand action from those with the power to act” and pause approvals of liquified natural gas (LNG) export permits to “take a hard look at the impact of LNG exports on energy costs, America’s energy security, and our environment.”
This is a momentous victory for all the frontline leaders in Texas and Louisiana who have been courageously challenging the expansion of these mammoth polluting facilities for many years — in their communities, in the courts and statehouses, and now at the federal government.
“This announcement from the Biden Administration is truly monumental for our communities,” said environmental justice leader and Southwest Louisiana resident Roishetta Ozane. “As someone who has witnessed the devastating impacts of fossil fuel extractive industries, I am filled with hope and gratitude for this important step towards justice.”
The Department of Energy will spend the coming months working with two national labs to review and potentially strengthen the criteria used to approve or deny LNG export permits and then open the review for public input before finalizing. Slowing the process down and strengthening federal policy helps our grantee partners and others in communities across the Gulf Coast in their campaigns against 14 priority gas export expansion projects that would combined emit a whopping 1.4 gigatons of climate pollution per year, the emissions equivalent to more than 377 coal plants. For reference, there are 200 coal plants operating in the US today. These facilities also emit toxic pollution that cause cancer, heart disease, and asthma in nearby communities.
For too long, Big Polluters have been allowed to export more fossil fuels year after year regardless of the cost to communities who are living with even more consequences from toxic pollution,” said Elida Castillo from Chispa Texas in Corpus Christi. “Despite what Big Oil wants us to believe, renewables are bringing down the energy costs for everyone. This is the path to a more sustainable and equitable clean energy future that stabilizes our economy and supports our domestic energy security.
Frontline groups are poised to play a key role in influencing these policy changes by continuing to raise awareness of the devastating public health and environmental harm that LNG processing and export facilities cause in their communities. At the same time, oil and gas lobbyists are not taking the news lightly, launching an eight-figure ad blitz to push back. These dynamic developments present an urgent opportunity for more organizing and communications to win the win, as they say.
How Did We Get Here
Many community-based groups living along the fencelines of polluting oil, gas, and petrochemical industries in the Gulf Coast have been sounding the alarm about liquified natural gas export expansion for years. The United States, already by far the world’s largest oil and gas producer, has recently become the world’s largest gas exporter, and is threatening to become exponentially bigger. Nearly 600 new or expanded oil, gas, and petrochemical projects have been proposed in the US, the vast majority of which are slated to be built near Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-wealth communities in Texas and Louisiana where local air and water pollution are already intolerable.
Since 2020, The Hive Fund and other allied funders and re-granters—including Equation Campaign and Funder Collaborative on Oil and Gas—have been resourcing a growing ecosystem of grantee partners at local, regional, national, and international levels to become an “unusually well-coordinated and targeted campaign,” to the distress of one gas industry insider.
Last summer, we supported a large delegation of Gulf South frontline leaders to travel to New York for Climate Week to help reinforce the call from UN Secretary General António Guterres to cut fossil fuel production by at least 70 percent by 2030 to avoid catastrophic warming. Thanks to pressure from frontline leaders, youth activists, and others around the world, diplomats from nearly 200 countries approved a global agreement in December that for the first time explicitly calls for a “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly, and equitable manner.”
Frontline groups across the Gulf South quickly seized this opportunity and came together with national groups around a campaign calling for the DOE to reject approval of the massive CP2 gas export facility in Louisiana, and to change the way the agency determines the public interest value of LNG export projects when issuing permits for all pending facilities. They delivered more than 300,000 signed petitions to the agency, ramped up social media efforts, called for a sit-in, and teamed up with Jane Fonda and a cadre of shrimpers and fishers to blockade the America’s Energy Summit in New Orleans last week.
The news from the White House this morning was a testament to the power of their organizing. “We don’t stop here,” Ozane reminds us. “We must keep fighting…until we can halt these permits and get them to stop being approved permanently.”
The Time for Surge Funding is Now
The Hive Fund pools funding from more than 30 funding partners to provide multiyear general operating support to constellations of grantee partners in key regions of Texas and Louisiana that are building power to challenge oil and gas expansion. Join us in ensuring that these groups are resourced to make the most of this moment! Contact us at info@hivefund.org to learn more or find a time to connect with us.
Get To Know More About These Powerful Groups:
Bullard Center for Environmental Justice
Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas
Deep South Center for Environmental Justice
Houston Climate Justice Museum and Cultural Center
Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend
Louisiana Against False Solutions
Organizers Institute South and West Industrial Areas Foundation
Power Coalition for Equity and Justice
Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign
South Texas Environmental Justice Network