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methane
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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Expanding LNG Over Renewable Energy Is Economic and National Security Failure: Report
"When comparing natural gas and renewables for energy security, renewables generally offer greater long-term energy security due to their local availability, reduced dependence on imports, and lower vulnerability to geopolitical disruptions."
Jan 17, 2025
As Republican President-elect Donald Trump prepares to further accelerate already near-record liquefied natural gas exports after taking office next week, a report published Friday details how soaring U.S. foreign LNG sales are "causing price volatility and environmental and safety risks for American families in addition to granting geopolitical advantages to the Chinese government."
The report, Strategic Implications of U.S. LNG Exports, was published by the American Security Project, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, and offers a "comprehensive analysis of the impact of the natural gas export boom from the advent of fracking through the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and provides insight into how the tidal wave of U.S. exports in the global market is altering regional and domestic security environments."
According to a summary of the publication:
The United States is the world's leading producer of natural gas and largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Over the past decade, affordable U.S. LNG exports have facilitated a global shift from coal and mitigated the geopolitical risks of fossil fuel imports from Russia and the Middle East. Today, U.S. LNG plays a critical role in diversifying global energy supplies and reducing reliance on adversarial energy suppliers. However, rising global dependence on natural gas is creating new vulnerabilities, including pricing fluctuations, shipping route bottlenecks, and inherent health, safety, and environmental hazards. The U.S. also faces geopolitical challenges related to the LNG trade, including China's stockpiling and resale of cheap U.S. LNG exports to advance its renewable energy industry and expand its global influence.
"When comparing natural gas and renewables for energy security, renewables generally offer greater long-term energy security due to their local availability, reduced dependence on imports, and lower vulnerability to geopolitical disruptions," the report states.
American Security Project CEO Matthew Wallin said in a statement that "action needs to be taken to ensure Americans are insulated from global price shocks, the impacts of climate change, and new health and safety risks."
"Our country must also do more to protect its interests from geopolitical rivals like China that subsidize their growth and influence by reselling cheap U.S. LNG at higher spot prices," Wallin asserted. "U.S. LNG has often been depicted as a transition fuel, and our country must ensure that it continues working towards that transition to clean sources instead of becoming dependent on yet another vulnerable fuel source."
Critics have
warned that LNG actually hampers the transition to a green economy. LNG is mostly composed of methane, which has more than 80 times the planetary heating power of carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere.
Despite President Joe Biden's 2024 pause on LNG export permit applications, his administration has presided over what climate campaigners have called a "staggering" LNG expansion, including Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana and more than a dozen other projects. Last month, the U.S. Department of Energy acknowledged that approving more LNG exports would raise domestic energy prices, increase pollution, and exacerbate the climate crisis.
In addition to promising to roll back Biden's recent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling across more than 625 million acres of U.S. coastal territory, Trump—who has nominated a bevy of fossil fuel proponents for his Cabinet—is expected to further increase LNG production and exports.
A separate report published Friday by Friends of the Earth and Public Citizen examined 14 proposed LNG export terminals that the Trump administration is expected to fast-track, creating 510 million metric tons of climate pollution–"equivalent to the annual emissions of 135 new coal plants."
While campaigning for president, Trump vowed to "frack, frack, frack; and drill, baby, drill." This, as fossil fuel interests poured $75 million into his campaign coffers, according to The New York Times.
"This research reveals the disturbing reality of an LNG export boom under a second Trump term," Friends of the Earth senior energy campaigner Raena Garcia said in a statement referring to her group's new report. "This reality will cement higher energy prices for Americans and push the world into even more devastating climate disasters. The incoming administration is poised to haphazardly greenlight LNG exports that are clearly intended to put profit over people."
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Company That Tracks Methane Leaks Says Crisis Worse 'Than Ever Before'
The CEO of methane-tracking company GHGSat said that company satellites had detected around 20,000 oil and gas operations, coal mines, and landfills that spewed massive amounts methane since the end of 2023.
Nov 01, 2024
The number of methane "super-emitters" detected by a satellite company has surged by approximately one-third over the past year, despite pledges from fossil fuel companies to reduce their emissions of the highly potent greenhouse gas.
Stephane Germain, the CEO of methane-tracking company GHGSat, toldThe Associated Press on Thursday that company satellites had detected around 20,000 oil and gas operations, coal mines, and landfills that spewed 220 pounds of methane per hour since the end of 2023—up from around 15,000 the year before.
"The past year, we've detected more emissions than ever before," Germain said, adding that existing data on methane emissions is only "scratching the surface" of the reality.
"The only safe and effective way to 'clean up' fossil fuel pollution is to phase out fossil fuels."
GHGSat's data covers the period since 50 fossil fuel companies pledged to end flaring and reduce methane emissions from their operations to "near zero" by 2030 at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP28, in Dubai.
At the time, more than 320 civil society organizations criticized the pledge and other voluntary commitments as a "dangerous distraction."
"The only safe and effective way to 'clean up' fossil fuel pollution is to phase out fossil fuels," the groups wrote in an open letter. "Methane emissions and gas flaring are symptoms of a more than century-long legacy of wasteful, destructive practices that are routine in the oil and gas industry as it pursues massive profits without regard for the consequences."
"That the industry, at this crucial moment in the climate emergency, is offering to clean up its mess around the edges in lieu of the rapid oil and gas phaseout that is needed is an insult to the billions impacted both by climate change and the industry's appalling legacy of pollution and community health impacts," they continued.
Yet now it seems as if the industry isn't even attempting to clean up its mess around the edges.
Germain, who is sharing his company's data ahead of the next round of climate talks at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, said that nearly half of the methane super-emitters GHGSat detected were oil-and-gas related. Another third were landfills or waste facilities, and 16% from mining. Geographically, most of the super-emitting sites are in North America and Eurasia.
The data comes amid growing concerns about the extent of methane emissions and how they threaten efforts to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas pollution this decade and limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C. Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide—with about 80 times its heat-trapping potential over its first 20 years in the atmosphere—but it also dissipates much more quickly. This means that curbing methane emissions could be an effective near-term part of halting temperature rise.
However, a series of studies published this year show these emissions moving in the wrong direction. A Nature analysis concluded in March that U.S. oil and gas operations were emitting around three times the methane that the U.S. government thought. A Frontiers of Science paper in July found that the growth rate of atmospheric methane concentrations had seen an "abrupt and rapid increase" in the early 2020s, due largely to the fossil fuel industry as well as releases from tropical wetlands.
The danger of methane emissions is one reason that the climate movement has mobilized to stop the buildout of liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure, as methane routinely leaks in the process of drilling for and transporting the fuel. A September study found that, despite industry claims it could act as a bridge fuel, LNG actually has a 33%. greater greenhouse gas footprint than coal when its entire lifecycle is taken into account.
The fate of the LNG buildout, at least in the U.S., could be decided by the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. The Biden-Harris administration paused the approval of new LNG exports while the Department of Energy considers the latest climate science. While a Trump-appointed judge then halted the pause, this does not actually stop the DOE from continuing its analysis. A second Trump administration, however, would be almost guaranteed not look further into the risk of methane emissions before it approves more LNG exports. Former President Donald Trump has promised to "drill, baby, drill" and offered a policy wishlist to fossil fuel executives who back his campaign.
A document leaked in October showed that a major oil and gas trade association had drafted plans for a second Trump administration, including ending Biden administration regulations to curb methane emissions, such as an emissions fee.
As Mattea Mrkusic, a senior energy transition policy lead at Evergreen Action, warned, "Under Trump, we could double down on even more dirty fossil fuel infrastructure that'll lock us into harmful pollution for decades to come."
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