A federal appeals court sided with community and environmental groups challenging an approval of a giant new offshore oil export terminal and tank farm in southeast Texas.
On Oct. 30, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that negated a license the Maritime Administration had issued for Sentinel Midstream’s Texas GulfLink project in Brazoria County, southeast of Houston. The court found that the agency had approved the project too close to another proposed terminal, Enterprise’s Sea Port Oil Terminal (SPOT).
The court’s decision came around the same time the Maritime Administration approved two other fossil fuel export terminals off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana. The agency called its review of a liquified natural gas facility off the Texas coast as “the fastest deepwater port license review in over 20 years.”
The Deepwater Port Act, a 1974 law passed in response to an oil embargo against the U.S., requires that the Maritime Administration ensure that offshore terminals and their infrastructure are placed a certain distance apart. A legal challenge led by Freeport-based Better Brazoria Clean Air and Water had sought to overturn the Maritime Administration’s approval of Texas GulfLink, arguing that it was only seven miles from SPOT, with plans for oil pipeline routes to cross each other near busy shipping lanes.
The court agreed, with Senior Judge Edith Clement writing that “Congress struck a careful balance between promoting and regulating the construction and operation of deepwater ports. This error [by the Maritime Administration] was a serious procedural deficiency that the agency could neither correct nor justify."
Amy Dinn, a lawyer with Texas Community Law Partners who argued the case alongside Earthjustice, said “Congress decided there should only be one deepwater port for each market area.”
“From the outset of the environmental review for these projects, community groups like Better Brazoria raised concerns about SPOT and GulfLink both applying to operate in the same area because of the cumulative burdens that Freeport would face,” Dinn said in a statement following the ruling.
The Maritime Administration on Oct. 23 approved the ST LNG export terminal 12 miles off the coast of Matagorda County, Texas. The facility could export up to 8.4 million metric tons of liquified natural gas and could emit over 9 million tons per year of greenhouse gases and more than 29,000 tons of health-harming “criteria” air pollutants.
On Nov. 5, the agency approved the Blue Marlin crude oil export terminal planned nearly 100 miles off the coast of Cameron Parish, Louisiana, along with the conversion of 100 miles of gas pipeline to transport oil.
