Oil and Gas Watch

Brendan Gibbons

Trump officials mislead on fertilizer price relief in effort to ram through Louisiana ammonia plant

With farmers suffering from high global fertilizer prices due to the war in Iran, Trump Administration officials held a press conference May 19 unveiling their plan to speed up permitting for a Louisiana facility they said would help provide economic relief for the American agricultural community. The only problem? The majority of the ammonia manufactured from natural gas at the proposed Blue Point Complex near Donaldsonville will not be used to make fertilizer, but rather to ship to overseas customers and as a fuel for a power plant and a steel factory, according to corporate disclosures and announcements.

Brendan Gibbons

Thousands of abandoned wells in Louisiana threaten to leak carbon dioxide from storage projects

Louisiana is one of the hotspots in the U.S. for sequestration projects that trap carbon dioxide (CO2) underground to protect the climate. Companies are planning 58 storage wells at 24 sites across the state. However, experts say a century of oil and gas drilling has left thousands of pathways for CO2 to squeeze its way back out into the atmosphere, potentially eroding any climate benefits and creating a safety threat for nearby residents in the event of a massive rupture or leak. Two recent reports examine the threat from the more than 186,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in Louisiana.

Texas plastics factory shows how companies take public subsidies while breaking pollution laws

The Formosa Point Comfort plastics manufacturing plant on the Texas Gulf Coast, which makes plastics and other chemicals out of oil and gas, received nearly $69 million in school district tax breaks over a decade. But despite the public support, the plant has routinely violated water and air pollution control laws – without ever losing its subsidies, as a consequence. In a new report, the Environmental Integrity Project examined 50 plastics plants built or expanded in the U.S. since 2012 and found that 64 percent of them received taxpayer subsidies worth a total of almost $9 billion over a decade.

EPA’s new rule will slash planet-warming methane emissions from oil and gas industry, but it could be stronger

According to the EPA, the final rule will avoid an estimated 58 million tons of methane emissions from 2024 to 2038. That’s nearly 80 percent less than projected methane emissions without the rule. But the EPA could have been stronger in requiring oil and gas flares to destroy 98 percent of emissions, rather than the 95 percent destruction rate included in the final rule. It also also failed to require relatively low-cost monitoring needed to make sure that flares are burning cleanly and efficiently.

Brendan Gibbons

World’s largest ammonia complex would make fertilizer from natural gas in West Virginia coalfields

The world’s largest nitrogen fertilizer plant, which would make ammonia out of natural gas, could be headed for a former coal mining site in rural West Virginia. TransGas Systems, a New York-based company, is seeking an air quality permit for a facility in Mingo County with six ammonia manufacturing units capable of producing up to 6,000 metric tons per day – a total of more than 13 million metric tons per year. The proposed plant is part of a wave of new and expanding fertilizer factories being built across the country.

Brendan Gibbons

February 28, 2024

New York is suing Pepsi over oil- and gas-based plastic pollution

When staff from the environmental protection bureau of the New York Attorney General’s office decided to use their authority to address oil- and gas-based-based plastic waste on the Buffalo River, they never intended to go after Pepsi, specifically. But after scientists with the office inventoried piles of trash that volunteers had pulled from the river in western New York, they found that Pepsi’s products made up 17 percent of the plastic waste they found. The lawsuit is the first in the U.S. involving a state suing a company over plastic pollution.