An ongoing battle to stop two liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects at the Port of Brownsville, Texas, appears to have resulted in a partial victory for climate activists, as a U.S. court struck down the previous approvals and passed the baton back to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Will the next move in this LNG court saga come from FERC or the affected project developers
In a victory for the City of Port Isabel, the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, the Sierra Club, and Vecinos para el Bienestar de la Comunidad Costera, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit put the ball back in FERC’s court by ruling to vacate the agency’s reauthorizations of two proposed LNG projects whose permits were revoked on August 6.
But the story of the LNG pair and the struggle to clear all the regulatory hurdles to bring these projects online has played out in the background for years. On March 30, 2016, Glenfarne Energy Transition’s Texas LNG Brownsville applied for a permit to build and operate an LNG export terminal, Texas LNG, on the north shore of the Brownsville Ship Channel in Cameron County, Texas.
Just over one month later, NextDecade’s Rio Grande LNG did the same, seeking approval to build and operate an LNG export terminal at another site on the same bank. At the same time, Rio Bravo Pipeline Company filed a related application for approval to construct and operate a new interstate pipeline system to deliver natural gas from existing network interconnections in Nueces County, Texas, to the Rio Grande terminal.
Together, the Rio Grande Terminal and Rio Bravo Pipeline form the Rio Grande Project. After issuing a final environmental impact statement (EIS) for each project, FERC issued orders approving the projects in November 2019.
Offshore Energy
