GASLANDS
A tour along the Gulf Coast reveals the past, present, and contested future of LNG export facilities
From Sierra magazine, authored by Delaney Nolan | Photos by Julie Dermansky |
| An LNG tanker in Freeport Beach, TX, dwarfs the seashore. Vessels can be up to 1,000 feet long. |
Seated on the porch of his home in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Solomon Williams Jr. began to unwind time. While his daughter chattered in his lap, Williams conjured up memories of Cameron, Louisiana, the Gulf Coast town 50 miles to the south where he was raised. He talked of Cameron as it used to be.
Williams, a longtime opponent of oil and gas development, still pops down to Cameron. The hour-long drive takes him through coastal prairie, through freshwater marsh and old rice fields that run wild. Once he's in town, all he sees are ghosts. |
| A gas station sits empty in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, which has lost nearly a third of its population in the last decade. |
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In less than a decade, Cameron has become the epicenter of the largest methane gas boom in history. As recently as the Obama era, the United States didn't export any LNG -- that is, liquefied natural gas, methane that has been supercooled and compressed so that it can be shipped overseas in massive tankers. Today, the US is the world’s biggest exporter of LNG.
Act now before it's too late: Biden's Department of Energy has one last chance to stop the expansion of fracked gas LNG exports before Trump takes office.
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| A single company -- Venture Global -- is poised to ship more LNG annually than does the entire nation of Qatar. Five massive LNG terminals are already in operation across the Gulf Coast. Five others are under construction, and another 12 are in some stage of permitting or pending approval. All of them are, to some degree, contested by local residents.
Williams remembers when Cameron's first terminal, Sabine Pass, started exporting LNG in 2016. He knew from the start that it would be trouble. The largest LNG facility in the nation sprawls across more than 1,000 acres of former marshland, polluting our air and water. |
| The Gulf marshlands are essential habitat for many bird species, including white ibis. |
| The LNG expansion harms not just Cameron but the planet as a whole. If all the planned LNG projects were to be built, their combined annual emissions would be equivalent to those of 695 coal-fired plants—or some 646 million gasoline-powered cars.
The Biden admin has the chance to protect our health, climate, and communities from LNG. Demand they act now!
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| An intensified oil and gas boom would almost certainly accelerate the hollowing out of communities located near LNG facilities. Since 2016 when the LNG export terminal began operating, Cameron Parish has lost about 30 percent of its population.
When Williams talks of Cameron's past, he also conjures the possible futures of other Gulf Coast communities. A tour of towns hosting LNG facilities -- places like Port Sulphur, Louisiana, and Brownsville, Texas -- reveals similar signs of decline, patterns so identical that they begin to appear less like isolated impacts and more like something endemic to LNG development, like the advancing stages of an aggressive disease.
In stage I, the building begins. The massive construction projects bring in trucks by the hundreds and send clouds of concrete dust billowing into nearby marshes. Acres of biodiverse wetlands are drained, leveled, and paved over. |
| Shrimpers have been among the most vocal opponents of the Gulf LNG terminals. |
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the intense demands of the plant begin to strain infrastructure: Water runs short, traffic gets worse, and medical services become stretched thin and harder to access. Dredging to make berths and sea channels for the massive tankers contributes to the fragile land’s erosion. Shrimpers and fishers get pushed out. Residents begin to murmur about leaving.
Stage III -- that looks like Cameron.
Read the full story in Sierra magazine of Cameron and other Gulf Coast towns experiencing each stage of the LNG export expansion, and how local individuals, community groups, and leaders are fighting to stop these devastating gas export projects. |
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Thank you for using your voice. The next few weeks are a critical opportunity for us to advocate for our communities, and we’re so glad to be in this work with you.
Sierra magazine |
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