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calcasieu pass
'Right Thing to Do': FERC Delays Controversial LNG Export Terminal
"We are happy about the delay, but these projects don't ever need to be approved and neither does any other LNG facility," one frontline advocate said.
Dec 04, 2024
Frontline communities along the Gulf Coast were granted a "temporary reprieve" last week when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission moved to pause its approval of the controversial Calcasieu Pass 2 liquefied natural gas export terminal while it conducts an assessment of its impact on air quality.
FERC approved Venture Global's CP2 in late June despite opposition from local residents who say the company's nearly identical Calcasieu Pass terminal has already wracked up a history of air quality violations and disturbed ecosystems and fishing grounds in Louisiana's Cameron Parish, harming health and livelihoods.
"This order reveals that FERC recognizes that CP2 LNG's environmental impacts are too great to pass through any real scrutiny" Megan Gibson, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), said in a statement on Monday.
"FERC's pause on construction may give us some temporary reprieve, but this project never should have been authorized in the first place."
FERC's decision follows a request for a rehearing of its June decision filed by frontline residents and community groups including For a Better Bayou and Fishermen Involved in Sustaining Our Heritage (FISH) as well as the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. In their request, the groups and individuals pointed to errors the commission had made in its approval decision.
"With this order, it seems FERC is finally willing to acknowledge that it has not done enough to properly consider the cumulative harm on communities caused by building so many of these LNG export terminals so close together," Nathan Matthews, a Sierra Club senior attorney, said in a statement. "Prohibiting construction of CP2 LNG while FERC takes another look at the environmental impact of this massive, polluting facility is the right thing to do."
"Still," Matthews continued, "FERC must take concrete steps to properly evaluate the true scope of the dangers posed to communities from gas infrastructure moving forward and avoid making unwarranted approvals in the future."
FERC's decision comes over four months after the D.C. Circuit Court remanded the commission's approval of Commonwealth LNG, also in Louisiana, over concerns that it had not fully assessed the impacts of that project's air pollution emissions. Now, frontline advocates are urging FERC to do its due diligence as it weighs the environmental impacts of CP2.
"Through the lenses of optical gas imaging, we've seen massive plumes of toxic emissions, undeniable proof that these projects poison the air we breathe," James Hiatt, director of For a Better Bayou, said of LNG export facilities. "Modeling must use the latest data from the most local sources to fully capture the harm these facilities inflict on Cameron Parish. Anything less is a betrayal of our community. FERC must choose justice over profit and stop sacrificing people for polluters."
Gibson of SELC said that FERC had already repeated some of the errors in its CP2 approval in its new order.
"This continued failure to fulfill its regulatory duty is not just an oversight—it is a failure to protect vulnerable communities and our economy from the real potential harms of this massive export project," Gibson said.
FERC's decision comes as the fate of the LNG buildout itself hangs in the balance. The Biden administration's Department of Energy is currently rushing to complete its renewed assessment of whether or not LNG exports serve the public interest. Environmental and frontline groups have argued that they do not because of local pollution, the fact that they would raise domestic energy bills, and their contribution to the climate emergency. CP2 alone would spew 8,510,099 metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent per year, which is about the same as adding 1,850,000 new gas cars to the road.
While President-elect Donald Trump has promised to "drill, baby, drill" and is likely to disregard any Biden administration conclusions, a strong outgoing statement against LNG exports would help bolster legal challenges to Trump energy policy.
At the same time, Bill McKibben pointed out in a column on Tuesday that the administration's pause on LNG export approvals while it updates its public interest criteria has acted to slow the industry's expansion, and that FERC's reconsideration of CP2 could add to this delay.
"The vote for the new review is 4-0, and bipartisan," McKibben wrote. "It could slow down approvals for the project till, perhaps, the third quarter of next year. And that's good news, because the rationale for new LNG exports shrinks with each passing month, as the gap between the price of clean solar, wind, and battery power, and the price of fossil fuel, continues to grow."
Ultimately, frontline Gulf Coast advocates want to see the LNG buildout halted entirely.
"I, along with the fishermen in Cameron, Louisiana, know firsthand how harmful LNG exports are, and see the total disregard they have for human life as they poison our families and seafood," said FISH founder Travis Dardar, an Indigenous fisherman in Cameron, Louisiana. "FERC's pause on construction may give us some temporary reprieve, but this project never should have been authorized in the first place. As far as anyone who believes in the fairytale of LNG being cleaner, we have paid with our communities and livelihoods. It's time to break these chains and turn away from this false solution."
Roisheta Ozaine, a prominent anti-LNG activist and founder of the Vessel Project of Louisiana, said that she, as a mother in an environmental justice community, saw "firsthand how LNG facilities prioritize profit over the well-being of our families. Commonwealth and CP2 are no different."
"We are happy about the delay, but these projects don't ever need to be approved and neither does any other LNG facility," Ozane continued. "My children are suffering from health conditions that threaten their daily lives, all while regulatory agencies and elected officials turn a blind eye. It's time for our leaders to put people before profit and prioritize the health of our communities over the pollution that harms us. We deserve a future where our children's health is safeguarded, not sacrificed."
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Shut Down CP1 and Don't Permit CP2, Frontline Advocates Say
A new report from the Louisiana Bucket Brigade documents how Venture Global's history of violations and evasions has continued into 2023.
Dec 13, 2023
Venture Global's existing Calcasieu Pass liquefied natural gas terminal experienced operational problems for more than 63% of the first half of 2023, according to a Louisiana Bucket Brigade report released Wednesday.
The findings build on the terminal's record of permit violations during its first year in operation and come as Venture Global seeks federal approval for the Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2) facility, which would emit 20 times more greenhouse gases than the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska.
"Calcasieu Pass needs to be shut down, and this company should not get any other permits," report co-author Anne Rolfes, who directs the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, said in a press briefing.
"I think that it's fair to say that there's reason to fear that these other facilities that Venture Global is building will have the same kind of air emission problems that we're seeing at the Calcasieu Pass facility."
The Louisiana Bucket Brigade has been keeping tabs on Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass facility since it released 180,099 pounds of gas in an accident the day before it began operating at the start of 2022.
"That's enormous," Rolfes said. "And for me, that kind of set the scene for this facility."
The company went on to violate its air permit more than 2,000 times during 2022, and then asked the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) to respond to the violations by increasing its pollution limits.
"The plan is to retroactively make everything legal," Rolfes said. "And if that sounds crazy, welcome to Louisiana."
But Rolfes and other frontline advocates don't believe Venture Global should be trusted with an expanded permit. During both 2022 and 2023, it failed to submit letters to LDEQ and to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) within seven days of any incidents, as mandated by the Clean Air Act. All the information the Louisiana Bucket Brigade has been able to gather comes from Venture Global's Title V Semiannual Monitoring reports for the first and second halves of 2022 and the first half of 2023, as well as from the careful documentation of people who live close to the facility and observed many more gas flares and sirens then the company reported.
In 2023, for example, the plants' neighbors observed flaring on 34 days that Venture Global failed to mention in its report for the first half of the year.
"If we didn't have these neighbors who were documenting the problem, Venture Global would be getting away with this," Rolfes said.
Even when it does submit reports, Venture Global's information is vague. For example, the 2023 report combined with neighbor testimony found the terminal experiencing problems on 115 of 181 days, or 63.5% of the year so far. However, one of those incidents was a 78-day accident that Venture Global said only lasted only five hours. If this strange report is omitted, then neighbors documented flaring on 69 more days than the company admitted.
Another concern raised by the report is that Venture Global does not appear to have taken steps to fix the underlying issues causing these accidents.
In 2022, the company said that issues with its turbines caused more than half of its permit violations, but that it had taken action to solve the problem. Despite this, it again stated that the turbines were behind 75% of 2023's permit violations.
"If this issue had been resolved in 2022, as Venture Global stated, why are the facility's turbines still the primary source of the problem?" the report authors asked.
This is concerning because Venture Global has said that CP2 and another LNG facility it is currently building in Plaquemines Parish, will be "technologically identical" to Calcasieu Pass.
Calcasieu Pass was built using modular construction, with parts including the power source made by Baker Hughes in Italy and then shipped to Louisiana for assembly, journalist Sara Sneath said during the briefing. When the entire power operation was assembled, the turbines emitted beyond permitted levels.
"I think that it's fair to say that there's reason to fear that these other facilities that Venture Global is building will have the same kind of air emission problems that we're seeing at the Calcasieu Pass facility," Sneath said.
Finally, the report raised alarms about what the LNG buildout is doing to Louisiana's fishing industry. Dredging to make room for large LNG tankers is polluting the estuary and harming fish, and the tankers themselves stir up enough silt and dirt to make fishing in the area impossible for half a day.
"What makes Louisiana, Louisiana?" Nathan, a third-generation crabber from Cameron, Louisiana, asked in the report. "It's not LNG plants. It's not refineries. It's seafood and the culture behind the seafood. I want to preserve that so my kids can experience it like I did, and the generations of fishermen before me."
The report makes six recommendations:
- LDEQ should deny Venture Global's request for additional Calcasieu Pass permits and instead shutter the facility.
- Venture Global should compensate area fishers for two years of lost wages and stress.
- LDEQ should fine the company for its violations.
- LDEQ, the Department of Natural Resources, EPA, Department of Energy, and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) should all deny permits for CP2.
- The agencies should cancel the permits for the Plaquemines terminal.
- The Department of Energy should not grant Venture Global permission to export gas from CP2.
There is evidence that opposition from climate advocates and local communities is making a difference on the federal level. Rolfes said advocates had expected CP2 to be on FERC's agenda for the fall, but it was not listed for October, November, or December.
"Every month it is not on the agenda, we consider a victory because it means that it's not getting part of the federal approval that it needs," Rolfes said, adding that she took it as a sign that "our work has some momentum."
"We do believe that we've reached the ears of the Biden administration," Rolfes said.
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