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liquefied natural gas
Rio Grande LNG Expansion: a Lose-Lose Proposition
The project jeopardizes the health and environment of frontline communities, threatens local economies and endangered wildlife, and exposes investors to financial and reputational risks.
May 26, 2025
In its 2024 fourth quarter update, NextDecade, a Houston-based liquefied natural gas company, announced its intention to more than double its export capacity at the Rio Grande LNG facility near Brownsville, Texas. Despite NextDecade’s sunny projections, community members and investors in the project’s owner, Global Infrastructure Partners, and its parent company, BlackRock, should be wary of risks associated with the LNG facility. The proposed expansion could further harm local communities, the region, and pose significant risks to investors.
LNG is primarily composed of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with 80 times the atmospheric warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. As originally proposed, this project was estimated to emit the equivalent emissions of 44 coal power plants every year, about 163 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. The newly announced expansion would be projected to emit over 300 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent every year, or the equivalent of the emissions from 83 coal plants annually.
Perhaps in an effort to address criticism about emissions, NextDecade’s original proposal included carbon capture and storage (CCS), though some opponents described this as greenwashing from the beginning. The company withdrew its CCS application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in August 2024, yet continues to tout sustainability on its website.
The path forward demands a just transition to clean energy that respects both people and the planet.
The Rio Grande LNG facility sits in a region already burdened by economic hardship and environmental injustice. Its expansion will amplify air pollution, exposing local residents—many of whom are Latino and low-income—to increased risks of respiratory illnesses, cancer, and other serious health conditions.
Several nearby towns and entities formally oppose the project, including Laguna Vista, South Padre Island, Port Isabel, and the Laguna Madre Water District. The Rio Grande LNG terminal is being built on the sacred land of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, yet Rio Grande LNG, regulatory agencies, and banks have failed to consult with that Tribe on its impacts.
Additionally, according to an environmental report,, the facilities will likely significantly degrade local fishing, shrimping, and natural tourism industries, putting communities’ livelihoods at risk. The project also threatens critical wetlands adjacent to the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, which protects endangered species such as the ocelot and Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle. The noise, light, and industrial activity will disrupt fragile ecosystems and threaten biodiversity. The opposition shines a light on the environmental risks inherent in this project.
Rio Grande LNG has faced significant challenges, including pending approval and permitting of the project from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Some banks and insurance companies have wavered in their support. Long before the expansion announcement, insurance company CHUBB backed out of the project. Societe Generale, BNP Paribas, and La Banque Postale have also pulled financial support from the project in the last several years.
For investors, this means escalating risks: construction delays, legal battles, potentially stranded assets, and the threat of diminished returns. Continuing to pour capital into this project is not just environmentally irresponsible—it is financially imprudent.
The global energy market is also shifting rapidly. Ongoing trade wars and on-and-off-again tariffs could make it difficult for Rio Grande LNG to meet its Final Investment Decision, the last fundraising hurdle a project like this must clear before beginning a new stage of construction. At the same time, LNG demand is projected to peak before 2030, and an oversupply threatens to depress prices. And the methane emissions from LNG production undermine the climate benefits often touted by proponents.
The Rio Grande LNG expansion is a lose-lose proposition. It jeopardizes the health and environment of frontline communities, threatens local economies and endangered wildlife, and exposes investors to financial and reputational risks. The path forward demands a just transition to clean energy that respects both people and the planet.
Investors in Global Infrastructure Partners and its parent company BlackRock can limit the harms associated with this project. Potential investors with each company should decline to invest in the expansion of the Rio Grande LNG terminal for the sake of local residents, the region’s economy, and returns on investments.
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How Louisiana Advocates Are Continuing to Fight the Trump-Backed LNG Boom
"We always have had to take matters into our own hands, and we have protected ourselves against enormous companies," one local campaigner said.
Apr 30, 2025
Louisiana advocates and their allies are not giving up in their fight to stop the liquefied natural gas buildout that threatens the health and well-being of Gulf Coast communities—not to mention the stability of the global climate—even as the Trump administration doubles down on its commitment to expanding LNG infrastructure.
In a briefing on Tuesday, community members, local advocates, and international campaigners shared how they would continue to push back against Venture Global, an LNG company that has amassed a record of ecosystem destruction and air pollution violations at its currently operating Calcasieu Pass export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana. Despite this, the Trump administration's Department of Energy granted conditional approval for the company’s nearby Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2), undoing the pause that the outgoing Biden administration had placed on it and other LNG approvals as it considered the public interest ramifications of LNG exports.
Yet Gulf Coast campaigners, who are used to dealing with a lax regulatory environment at the state level, were not defeated.
"Anybody who reports here in Louisiana regularly understands that we've never been protected by our regulatory environment. Never," Anne Rolfes, who directs the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told reporters. "And so we always have had to take matters into our own hands, and we have protected ourselves against enormous companies."
Misadventure Global
One key strategy that the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and others have used to get around the regulatory rubber stamping of bad actors is to raise public awareness of how the companies turning coastal Louisiana into a sacrifice zone really operate.
Case in point is Venture Global. Rolfe and John Allaire—a 40-year veteran of the oil and gas industry who lives next door to the Calcasieu Pass terminal—laid out its short but extensive record of environmental violations and unethical business practices.
Even before the original Calcasieu Pass began exporting, in January 2022, it had to clear a space for tankers to access the facility.
"It's understood that this is a volatile fuel to lock into, that you don't want to rely on a fuel that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump control."
"They pumped hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of black viscous sludge from their marine berth out into the front of the Gulf of Mexico," Allaire said. "And that was the first indication of what was to come with Venture Global."
Since it began operating, the company has added air, noise, and light pollution to the water pollution that has devastated local fisheries.
Allaire has taken hundreds of videos and photos of flaring incidents.
"The light pollution is unbelievable," he said. "At night, I can literally read a book when the flares are going, and I'm over a mile away from their flare stacks."
Allaire's observations are backed up by the official record. In June 2023, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality sent Venture Global a compliance order detailing over 2,000 air permit violations from its first 10 months of operation, Allaire said. The company has yet to resolve the complaint, and the state sent them a warning letter in March covering their 2024 and 2025 rule-breaking.
The company also has a history of failing to report its flares and other excess emissions to the Department of Environmental Quality as required by the Clean Air Act.
If they reported and then investigated their violations, "that would enable them to really understand what's happening at their facility so that they could prevent future problems," Rolfe said. "They absolutely aren't doing that."
In March, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and the Habitat Recovery Project notified Venture Global of intent to sue the company over Clean Air Act violations at its Calcasieu Pass facility.
But the environmental groups aren't the only ones suing Venture Global. The company stretched its commissioning phase—during which it is considered still in the process of establishing itself and can sell its products to the highest bidder rather than honoring its contracts—for three years and three months, beginning normal operations just this April.
"This is absolutely off from the industry norm," Rolfe said.
Now, other major fossil fuel companies, including Shell and BP, are pursuing arbitration claims against Venture Global for breach of contract. Investors have joined a class-action lawsuit against it, saying it violated federal securities law by misrepresenting its prospects.
Yet Venture Global has huge ambitions for the region. In addition to Calcasieu Pass and CP2, it wants to build three other export terminals in coastal Louisiana and more than triple its capacity from 30 million tons per annum (MTPA) of liquid gas—already over a quarter of the 88 MTPA exported by the U.S. exports in 2024—to 104 MTPA.
"As a review, they're flouting the Clean Air Act. They've manipulated the commissioning phase. They're being sued by everybody they've done business with. Is this a company that our country and our state should put such faith in?" Rolfe asked.
She answered her own question: "Of course, our answer is no."
Stall Tactics
Another strategy the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and their allies seek to employ is to delay Venture Global's ambitions long enough for the economic reality of the LNG boom to catch up with it.
In addition to the approval of CP2, Australian company Woodside announced on Monday that it had approved a Louisiana LNG project worth $17.5 billion. Yet the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis concluded in April that the massive growth in LNG capacity would exceed dwindling demand within two years.
"It's understood that this is a volatile fuel to lock into, that you don't want to rely on a fuel that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump control. So people are trying to get off of gas," Rolfe said.
"The economics are going to catch up with them. I just want it to be before they destroy the coast of Louisiana."
This means that LNG companies like Woodside and Venture Global are behaving "like a kid in a candy store," Rolfe continued. "That kid, unchecked, will eat so much, they'll throw up. I think the same is true with this industry. Unchecked, it will do itself harm."
The key is therefore to stall the buildout long enough that many projects become infeasible. This tactic has worked for frontline communities during the first Trump administration, Rolfe said. Through a combination of public pressure, records requests, and legal action, community advocates were able to delay the construction of a plastic plant proposed by the Chinese company Wanhua Chemical U.S. Operation, LLC, which would have released the World War 1-era nerve gas phosgene into the already pollution-burdened St. James Parish.
The economic outlook for the plant had always been "dubious" Rolfe said, and eventually the company gave up on trying to build it.
"They could have gotten approval and gotten on their way within a month. But our suit and then our constant presence and making them table things and so forth, drew it out and let the economics catch up with them," Rolfe said.
Rolfe added that the gas industry has similarly gotten ahead of itself.
"They're greedy, right? They want to grab all the candy they can, and the economics are going to catch up with them. I just want it to be before they destroy the coast of Louisiana."
Very Risk Business
Another strategy to slow down the building of new LNG facilities like CP2 is to target the one thing, in addition to permits and funds, that they can't move forward without: insurance.
Insurance is one sector in which the economic impact of the climate crisis is already being felt, as Ethan Nuss, senior energy finance campaigner at Rainforest Action Network, explained.
For example, major insurer Chubb earns $1.5 billion a year in premiums from the fossil fuel industry, which was already canceled out early this year with the $1.5 billion in pre-tax losses they took from the Los Angeles wildfires. On a local level, some insurers have pulled out of Louisiana all together to avoid insuring against climate-fueled extreme weather events.
"Once they are really educated about the permit violations and the legal risks and the true risk landscape that they're facing by taking on this client, many of them are very concerned."
"This is not a time to build something like CP2 that would deepen the climate crisis," Nuss said.
Because insurers are on the books for both fossil fuel projects and the damage for climate disasters, and because many of them have climate and human rights policies, they are vulnerable to growing pressure from the climate movement to drop the oil and gas clients costing them so much money.
RAN in February published the names of the major insurers for Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass, which it obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. These included Chubb subsidiary ACE American Insurance Company, AIG subsidiary National Union Fire Insurance Co., Allianz, Swiss Re, AXA, and Tokio Marine subsidiary Houston Casualty Company.
"That has kicked off a global effort to reach out to those insurers and begin to educate them about what is happening in Southwest Louisiana, the impacts from Calcasieu Pass, and what associated risks they're facing," Nuss said.
As a result of these efforts, Swiss Re has agreed to meet with the fishing community of Southwest Louisiana, to talk about the "devastating impacts on their livelihoods" from Calcasieu Pass' operations.
"Often with these global financial institutions, they aren't fully aware of what's really happening on the ground. That client is maybe just another line on the spreadsheet. But once they really start hearing the stories, once they are really educated about the permit violations and the legal risks and the true risk landscape that they're facing by taking on this client, many of them are very concerned," Nuss said.
Nuss hopes that, once fully informed, insurers would decide any project of Venture Global's is a "very risky business that they don't want to be involved in."
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Greenpeace Protests EU Gas Imports That Empower 'Autocrats' and 'Political Bullies'
"Energy sovereignty through renewables is no longer just an environmental necessity, it is a matter of security," one campaigner said.
Mar 27, 2025
Carrying banners reading, "Their gas, your cash" beside images of U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, eight members of Greenpeace Belgium took to the sea on Thursday to protest the arrival of U.S. and Russian liquefied natural gas imports into the port of Zeebrugge, as part of a larger campaign to push the European Union to abandon fossil gas by 2035.
Greenpeace activists faced off against the U.S. Marvel Swallow on board the Greenpeace vessel the Arctic Sunrise, as well as in smaller inflatable boats, according to a statement. Greenpeace Belgium further reported on social media that the group also confronted a Russian gas tanker. The campaigners argued that, in addition to worsening the climate crisis, relying on methane gas imports for its energy puts the E.U. at the mercy of foreign strongmen.
"Autocrats like Putin fund their wars with gas revenues, while political bullies like Trump use their dominance as gas suppliers to pressure European countries economically and politically," Greenpeace Belgium spokesperson Joeri Thijs said from the Arctic Sunrise. "Meanwhile, families and communities struggle with soaring energy bills and extreme weather fueled by fossil gas. This dependence leaves us all vulnerable. Energy sovereignty through renewables is no longer just an environmental necessity, it is a matter of security."
❗ We’re in action RIGHT NOW. ❗ The Arctic Sunrise is currently confronting both a Russian and an American gas tanker set to Zeebrugge with fossil gas. We are here to say: our energy bill HAS TO STOP fueling Trump’s US nor Putin’s Russia. #StopFossilGas #TheirGasYourCash
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— Greenpeace Belgium (@greenpeace.be) March 27, 2025 at 7:35 AM
The protest comes roughly two months after Trump declared an energy emergency in the U.S. in a bid to increase fossil fuel production. While the U.S. emerged as the world's largest LNG exporter under former President Joe Biden, the Biden administration also paused approvals of new LNG exports while it conducted a study into their impacts. The results of that study, released in December, confirmed the warnings of climate advocates that sending LNG abroad would exacerbate the climate crisis and the local pollution burden of frontline communities while raising domestic energy prices.
After taking office, however, Trump promptly reversed the Biden pause, and, earlier this month, conditionally approved exports from Venture Global's controversial Calcasieu Pass 2 terminal in coastal Louisiana. There are now signs that European leaders may cave to Trump's desire to export more U.S. fossil gas in an attempt to avoid tariffs. The U.S. is already the leading fossil gas importer to the E.U., at 45% in 2024.
When it comes to Russian gas, the E.U. has had sanctions in place against Russia since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and launched a ban on the transshipment of Russian LNG at E.U. ports on Wednesday. Yet, the bloc has had a hard time weaning itself off of Russian gas—imports rose by 18% during 2024 as Russia became the its second-leading source of methane gas imports. The E.U. also spent more on Russian oil and gas than it delivered in aid to Ukraine.
"Europe's overreliance on fossil gas leads to rising energy bills, sickness, deaths, destruction of nature, and climate chaos."
"The E.U.'s dependence on fossil fuel imports, with all the problems that brings, can't be broken without a wholesale move to renewable energy and a clear commitment to phase out all fossil fuels, including fossil gas," Thomas Gelin, energy and climate campaigner at Greenpeace E.U., said in a statement. "The first step must be an immediate ban on all new fossil fuel projects in the E.U.; it's senseless to prepare for more fossil fuels than we need. No new pipelines, no new gas terminals, no half-measures: a ban on all new fossil fuel projects, pure and simple."
The E.U. has succeeded in curbing its gas demand by 20% between 2021 and 2024, and overall imports fell by 19% last year. Greenpeace is calling on the bloc to build on that success with a ban on all new fossil fuel projects, a ban on investments in fossil fuels, and a phaseout of fossil gas by 2035. An open letter to member countries making these demands has been signed by over 81,000 people.
"Europe's overreliance on fossil gas leads to rising energy bills, sickness, deaths, destruction of nature, and climate chaos," the letter reads. "Fossil gas is a dirty, deadly fossil fuel like oil and coal. This is why the European Union and its member states must act now and #StopFossilGas and all other fossil fuel projects before it's too late."
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