Oil and Gas Watch

Growing use of secrecy agreements between developers and local governments troubles advocates of open government

Developers and local governments across the U.S. that want to avoid public debates with local residents about controversial projects – from data centers to solar farms and petrochemical plants – in recent years have increasingly employed nondisclosure agreements as a tactic to keep things quiet and out of the press until deals are complete, according to observers of the industry. For example, when local elected officials in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, began negotiating to remove an historically Black community beside the Mississippi River for a 17,000-acre industrial complex, the officials signed what amount to gag orders promising to “protect the secrecy” of the project.