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US Gulf South Activists to Japan: 'Enough Is Enough' When It Comes to Bankrolling LNG
As we meet with Japanese financial institutions and policymakers, we carry a clear message: The human cost of Japan's LNG investments can no longer be ignored.
Jan 29, 2025
The United States is at a political crossroads, with President Donald Trump and his allies promising to accelerate fossil fuel expansion. We write with urgency about the devastating impact of Japanese-funded methane gas exports on our communities.
As I, Manning Rollerson, stepped off a plane in Tokyo this week, I carry with me the stories of five generations of family who have watched our Texas Gulf South community transform into what can only be described as a "sacrifice zone." I am a Black community rights activist and founder of Freeport Haven Project for Environmental Justice. I have watched my historically Black community bear the brunt of industrial pollution for far too long. With 27 grandchildren, this fight is deeply personal. When our children are born with cancer and breathing issues, there should be accountability. That's why I'm here in Japan—to say enough is enough.
We are part of a delegation of frontline residents from the U.S. Gulf South traveling to Japan to confront the financial institutions bankrolling liquefied natural gas (LNG) expansion in their communities. Our mission comes at a critical moment, as Japanese banks line up to expand terminals like Cameron LNG in Louisiana.
Japanese leaders need to see our faces. They need to understand that when they sign LNG financing agreements, they're signing away our children's health, our neighborhoods' safety, and our planet's future.
The evidence we bring is compelling and direct. I, Sharon Wilson, spent 12 years in the oil industry before becoming an environmental investigator for Oilfield Witness. Using specialized optical gas imaging cameras, I've documented methane releases from Japanese-financed gas and LNG facilities. "If only people could see what's here, smell the air, drink the water, visualize the emissions, this wouldn't be happening," I can say with certainty. "The public would not stand for it."
Others, like Roishetta Ozane, founder of Louisiana's Vessel Project and a Black mother living in Sulphur, could not be with us in person but are with us in spirit: The journey to Japan is deeply personal. "My children face severe health conditions caused by pollution the oil and gas industry unleashes into our air and water," she says. "We cannot allow our communities to bear the burden of fossil fuel racism any longer."
Japanese institutions have emerged as the leading financiers of U.S. LNG export infrastructure. Private banks like MUFG are backing new projects like Rio Grande LNG near Port Isabel, Texas, while companies like Mitsui continue acquiring Texas gas fields—even as research shows exported LNG has a 33% greater climate impact than coal.
The Japanese government is the largest public financier of U.S. LNG. Japanese private banks MUFG, Mizuho, and SMBC are the top three private financiers of U.S. LNG, providing over $35 billion. Japanese institutions, such as the Nippon Export and Investment Insurance, are considering providing financing for the expansion of the Cameron LNG export terminal, while Japanese companies JERA and INPEX have signed offtake contracts for the Calcasieu Pass 2 project.
For us, this trip represents more than just advocacy—it's about bringing the reality of our communities directly to those making decisions half a world away. Japanese leaders need to see our faces. They need to understand that when they sign LNG financing agreements, they're signing away our children's health, our neighborhoods' safety, and our planet's future.
Our timing is strategic, coming just after Trump advisers signed an executive order to restart LNG export approvals—even as Japan positions itself as a clean energy leader in Asia while simultaneously pushing for expanded methane gas infrastructure across the region. There's no such thing as clean gas. Methane is intentionally released and blasted into our atmosphere from the moment a hole is drilled into the ground. This isn't about leaks—it's about a fundamentally dirty industry that cannot operate without massive pollution. And now, with Trump's team plotting to restart permits, our communities face even greater threats.
As we meet with Japanese financial institutions and policymakers, we carry a clear message: The human cost of Japan's LNG investments can no longer be ignored. Despite the threat of a fossil fuel-friendly administration, we have proven our resilience. We stopped LNG projects before, and we will do it again. This time, we're taking our fight directly to the source of the money. Human rights abuses are being committed in our Gulf South communities in the United States—and Japanese money is making it possible. We will not stop fighting until our communities are safe from harm.
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By Fast-Tracking LNG, Trump Is Putting Big Oil Above the People
President Trump made it clear in his campaign that his apparent priority was to uplift struggling Americans. This is simply and totally at odds with his promise to “drill, baby, drill.”
Jan 24, 2025
On Day One of his second term, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an assortment of executive orders to reverse steps taken by the Biden administration to mitigate climate change. He replaced those steps with orders meant to enrich a variety of corporate interests, the most prevalent being the oil and gas industry. In less than 24 hours, Trump froze crucial clean energy funds that America needs from the Inflation Reduction Act, presented the Arctic to corporate polluters on a silver platter, and prepared to turbocharge dirty energy exports.
One of the most striking executive orders is one that calls for the unfettered expansion of methane gas exports, or LNG. In this order, there is very specific, seemingly-tailored language that policy researchers confirmed is meant to expedite the approval of Delfin LNG, a floating offshore facility that the former administration refused to greenlight due to widespread changes in “project ownership, design, financing, and operations” that had been made since the project’s original approval in 2017. In short, it’s a carbon bomb project that would be responsible for 92 million metric tons of pollution annually—equivalent to 24 coal plants.
Last week during a confirmation hearing for transportation secretary, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) made sure to call on nominee former Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) to approve permits for several oil and gas export terminals while accusing the Biden administration of “slow walking” the Delfin project. It seems that this executive order will only help aid this company in a quick turnaround to move forward while disregarding environmental review.
As rapid oil and gas expansion will burden Americans with higher prices and dump even more pollution into our air and water, Big Oil and their political mouthpieces will line their pockets more than ever before.
However, Delfin is just one of 14 pending LNG export facilities poised to be rapidly approved by the Trump administration. In new research from Friends of the Earth and Public Citizen, we examined announced supply agreements between exporters and LNG buyers to find that 76 million metric tons per year of LNG is under agreement to be sold from all of these facilities. The supply agreements executed so far represent an obscene amount of climate pollution—at least 510 million metric tons per year, equivalent to that of 135 coal plants.
These numbers are staggering not just for the climate impact, but for the impact on American consumers. Before the second Trump term even began, former Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm warned that LNG exports could outpace global fuel demand. More LNG exports could precipitate a sharp increase in domestic gas prices leaving American consumers with higher energy bills.
While these 14 pending LNG projects have publicly disclosed buyers, there are several more pending LNG projects that could also pick up speed in the next few months. Another major executive order, “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential,” will have the Trump administration rolling back several of the Biden administration's achievements aimed at protecting the Arctic. It would also prioritize the development of the Alaska LNG facility.
The long delayed project, which is set to be one of the largest LNG export terminals in the U.S., was approved by the Biden administration in 2022. But the massive $44 billion boondoggle, which involves building an 800-mile pipeline across Alaska, has always been too risky for the private sector. That’s why the state of Alaska has been lobbying for public financing—including via a scheme to loot clean energy loan funding from the Inflation Reduction Act. If the Trump administration successfully steers our tax dollars towards Alaska LNG, it will mean lighting the fuse of a carbon bomb 10 times dirtier than the Willow Project.
President Trump made it clear in his campaign that his apparent priority was to uplift struggling Americans. This is simply and totally at odds with his promise to “drill, baby, drill”—as rapid oil and gas expansion will burden Americans with higher prices and dump even more pollution into our air and water, Big Oil and their political mouthpieces will line their pockets more than ever before. These Day One executive orders, and the giveaways to oil and gas they offer, confirm that Trump has already abandoned the people he once again pledged to serve and put profit first instead.
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What the Biden Admin Can Still Do to Defuse the LNG Bomb Before Trump Grabs the Trigger
At the very least what the administration can and must do is tell the truth: More LNG exports are not in the public interest.
Dec 04, 2024
When the environmental history of the Biden administration is written, the Inflation Reduction Act will have pride of place—for all its compromises and flaws, it finally set serious federal money flowing toward the task of an energy transition, and defending it from Trumpian attack will be job one for green lobbyists for the next for years. (And not an impossible job in every case—the new factories built with IRA money have turned a lot of legislators, including in red states, into reluctant supporters).
But the second most useful thing the Biden administration did came less than a year ago—its January decision to pause new permits for liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals. This doesn’t sound to the untrained ear like such a big deal, but as readers of this newsletter know, it was: Had the industry continued to build at the pace it wanted, the climate damage from American LNG exports would soon have topped every single thing that happens in Europe. This is the biggest greenhouse gas bomb on planet Earth.
You could tell what a big deal it was by the way it angered Big Oil (and big banking and big shipping)—every story about the industry’s unprecedented support for Donald Trump’s election made it clear that this was the number one casus belli. That’s because—as American demand for natural gas begins to sag in the face of the renewables buildout—their main hope was to emulate the cigarette industry and seek new markets in Asia. But a combination of on-the-ground groups in the Gulf of Mexico and climate activists across the country stuck a potato in the tailpipe. The Biden administration promised a full report before the year was out about whether or not the exports were still in the public interest.
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.
And yesterday, somewhat surprisingly, even before that report was released, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, slowed down the process some more. They issued a finding that the next terminal up for consideration, a mammoth facility called CP 2 destined for the Louisiana coast, needed to go through a new round of environmental review because of its potential effect on local air quality. As the experts at the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) explained:
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued an order setting aside its approval for Venture Global’s massive CP2 export facility in Cameron Parish, Louisiana. The order modifies and, in part, sets aside the commission’s previous authorization order to conduct a supplemental environmental impact analysis on the project’s cumulative air quality and emissions impacts. The order states that FERC will not authorize construction until the commission completes this process.
The vote for the new review is 4-0, and bipartisan. 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.
The Biden administration should and could deny the permits outright, and here’s a petition urging them to do just that, and plans from Climate Defiance for demonstrations at the DOE next week. Most observers seem to think the denial is unlikely, especially after the FERC ruling gave them a plausible out on the most controversial of the projects. (And if they do deny them, the Trump administration might well be able to un-deny them, though at some point this all enters a valley of legal complication too thick for me to hack my way through.) Still—finish what you started. A year of investigation should have made clear that more LNG exports are not in the public interest, which means saying no.
At the very least what the Biden administration can and must do is tell the truth.
The detailed report on the economics and science of LNG exports is apparently all written and just waiting for the DOE to release, but in some ways almost as important as the report itself will be the cover letter that comes with it. The report will be dense; the language that introduces it should be clear. Though it won’t necessarily stop the new guys from doing what they want, it’s time for President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to declare forthrightly that
- There are too many of these projects in too small a space along the Gulf, and it is intolerable for the people who live there. As James Hiatt, director of For a Better Bayou, said this morning: “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. 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.” People like Hiatt—and especially the indefatigable Roishetta Ozane—have fought as if their lives were on the line, because they are. What heroes!
- The U.S.—the leading LNG exporter in the world—is producing far more gas already than the world needs. The industry’s rhetorical defense has focused on the need to bolster European supplies after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine—but Europe is now awash in gas, and has used the war to dramatically convert to renewable energy. Every long-term indication is that the continent needs more, not less. Which is why new contracts for LNG exports are designed for Asia—where they will undercut a similar conversion to sun and wind.
- In climate terms, exporting natural gas is at least as bad as exporting coal. Robert Howarth’s ground-breaking paper laying out the numerical proof was one of the keys in the battle to get the Biden pause; it’s since been published in a peer-reviewed journal. It documents the amount of heat-trapping methane that pours into the air at every point in this process. There is no possible way to square the expansion of LNG with reducing climate pollution. That won’t matter to Trump, of course, since he doesn’t believe in climate change, but it is a robust truth that needs to be stated clearly and publicly.
- In economic terms, this harms the American consumers who haven’t yet managed to install a heat pump and who are still dependent on natural gas. If shipload after shipload is sent overseas, every analysis has found, the price will go up for those Americans.
It took me far too long to figure out the danger these exports posed. I started writing about it for The New Yorker and on this newsletter in late summer of 2023, and once I understood the situation I stopped writing and started organizing, helping people like Jamie Henn and Jeremy Symons and Maura Cowley build an ad hoc climate wing of the coalition that won the pause. I’m very proud of the role Third Act played in mobilizing public opinion and I’m very proud of the role this small newsletter played too. The New York Times didn’t write a single story until the day before Biden’s decision when it was already a fait accompli; it took independent journalism and independent activism to make it happen.
One reason Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat broke my heart is because I think she would have quashed this expansion for good. But I’m hopeful that we delayed them long enough (especially given this new FERC ruling) to seriously screw up the prospects for endless expansion. Every month counts (and every month adds to financing costs); the great movement that arose to defeat these projects has taken more than a dozen months out of the calendar for their promoters, and that may well spell the difference for many projects.
The always-rational gas industry has treated its opponents with the usual respect—as one official of the Canadian producers explained recently, we are all part of a “cult-like” movement seeking “a kind of promised land where everything will operate in perfect balance.” Actually, we’re just a bunch of folks hoping for a planet that doesn’t burn right up—but to Big Oil that must look like pretty much the same thing. At any rate, if it’s a cult led by folks like Roishetta Ozane and James Hiatt, then this Methodist is happy to play his part.
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