Oil and Gas Watch

16 gas storage projects planned in salt caverns along Gulf Coast for LNG industry and data centers

Companies are planning a wave of 16 projects along the Gulf Coast to store natural gas underground in salt caverns to supply the growing number of liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals and provide backup fuel for the booming data center industry. Building so many caves full of methane could lead to more leaks of a powerful greenhouse gas. Eight of the proposed storage caverns would be in Texas, five in Louisiana, and three in Mississippi.

Brendan Gibbons

Despite offshore risks, industry looks to Texas Gulf waters to dump carbon waste

With billions in taxpayer subsidies up for grabs, energy companies are looking to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico as a dumping ground for carbon dioxide, despite facing more expenses and greater risks of leaks and blowouts than burying the pollutant onshore. Companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Repsol have been scooping up hundreds of thousands of acres in the Gulf, including in state waters in Texas and Louisiana, for potential carbon waste injection sites. One recent study also contemplates burying pollution off the coasts of Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey.

Trump Administration proposes weakening pollution rules for the chemical plastics ‘recycling’ industry

If the proposal were implemented, pyrolysis units – which heat plastics waste at up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit – would no longer be categorized as incinerators under the Clean Air Act and would therefore not be required to meet limits for cancer-causing air pollution

Brendan Gibbons

Trump Administration’s embrace of biofuels likely to drive up fuel costs and increase pollution

In March, the Trump Administration updated the U.S.’s Renewable Fuel Standard to require more plant-based fuel to be used in American cars and trucks than ever before, drawing praise from soybean farmers and agribusiness groups. The new standard requires refiners and fuel importers to blend in record-high amounts of plant-based diesel – 60 percent more than last year. The change is the largest annual increase in the program’s history, according to commodities analysis group Argus. The administration also maintained an existing mandate to blend 15 billion gallons per year of corn ethanol into motor gasoline.

Wave of gas plants for data centers threatens communities with pollution, costs, and water consumption

“The Power Behind AI,” a recent report by the Environmental Integrity Project, found that at least 74 natural gas-fired power plants are planned across the U.S. to provide energy for the rapidly growing data center industry. These proposed gas plants, which would be dedicated to serving data centers, are expected to release nearly 662 million tons per year of greenhouse gas pollution, the equivalent of 140 million cars and trucks driving for a year or the annual emissions from the entire nations of Australia or France.

Brendan Gibbons

Texas’s orphaned well count continues to grow, contaminating land and water and hurting taxpayers

As of April 2026, the number of orphaned wells – which are abandoned wells with no known or financially-solvent owners – increased by 37 percent compared to last year, reaching over 12,000 wells. The number of orphaned wells continues to grow as older wells are sold off to increasingly smaller companies with fewer resources that sometimes fail to plug their wells or go out of business. Current regulations also allow companies to postpone plugging their wells indefinitely.