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.

Temperatures rise over whether EPA should allow Louisiana to permit carbon waste burial projects

This summer, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to rule on a petition by Louisiana for state authority to issue permits for carbon dioxide waste disposal wells that would allow petrochemical companies to capture the climate-warming pollutant from their smokestacks and bury it underground. Encouraged by billions of dollars in public subsidies offered by the Biden Administration, oil and gas companies and other industries are proposing at least 27 carbon capture and sequestration projects in Louisiana, including beneath the Gulf of Mexico.

Brendan Gibbons

The U.S. LNG export boom is spreading to Mexico, creating new environmental threats

Developers are planning six LNG terminals capable of liquefying and exporting natural gas from Mexico, including three planned for highly sensitive areas of the Gulf of California in the country’s northwest. The LNG terminals would rely on U.S. natural gas, mostly from West Texas, and would export most of their gas to Asian countries. The Mexican terminals could compete for customers with 30 new or expanding U.S. LNG terminals either under construction or proposed but not yet built, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico.

EPA report: Houston plastics plant at risk of explosion

In November 2019, a TPC Group plastics chemical plant in Port Neches, Texas, exploded and burned for more than a month, causing evacuations of nearby residents and forcing schools to close. A TPC plastics plant in Houston has some of the same potential problems as caused the Port Neches disaster: dead-end sections of pipe called "dead legs," according to an EPA inspection. A similar explosion at the Houston facility could be even more catastrophic, because 8,000 people live within a mile.

Brendan Gibbons

Outdated safety rules at LNG terminals include measure meant to prevent accidents

The amount of natural gas sent abroad from the U.S. more than quadrupled since 2015. However, experts say that safety regulations for liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals are lagging. Eight of the nine LNG safety standards overseen by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration are outdated, including one meant to protect against explosions from the refrigerant gases uses to liquify the methane gas.

Federally-funded carbon waste disposal projects ignite opposition

More than 100 carbon capture and storage projects are proposed across the U.S., including 27 in Louisiana, because of billion of dollars in new federal tax credits. Many of these pollution burial projects are drawing opposition from local residents and scientists. One is in the fragile wetlands of southern Louisiana, where a Dallas-based company called Cox Oil received federal funding to help build a 110-mile carbon dioxide pipeline from petrochemical plants in Geismar, Louisiana, into the Gulf of Mexico near Grand Isle.