New status for state: Texas is LNG exporter
Turner takes heat from activists for supporting LNG terminal in Valley
Mayor Sylvester Turner is receiving criticism from environmentalists after reaching across the political aisle to support a liquefied natural gas project in the Rio Grande Valley.
Turner joined U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to request that federal regulators approve NextDecade’s proposed Rio Grande LNG export terminal at the Port of Brownsville. The two wrote open letters to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in support of the project, which would also require the construction of a natural gas pipeline from the Agua Dulce hub near Corpus Christi to the South Texas waterway.
With Turner serving as one of four co-chairs of the Climate Mayors movement, the Sierra Club quickly criticized the Houston mayor’s backing of the project. Turner’s support, they said, comes at a time when three cities near the proposed site — South Padre Island, Port Isabel and Laguna Vista — have all passed resolutions opposing the project.
“Mayor Turner is turning his back on the cities that have passed resolutions against this project,” the Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels Houston organizer Bry-
an Parras said in a statement. “Has he learned nothing from Hurricane Harvey? The title of being a co-chair of ‘Climate Mayors’ holds little weight when he throws his support behind Rio Grande LNG, a project which would increase fracking and sacrifice South Texas. Endorsing it puts communities across Texas at risk and locks us into decades of more fossil fuel extraction and pollution.”
Cornyn primarily cited economic reasons for his support of the project. NextDecade recently moved its headquarters from The Woodlands to downtown Houston, and if the projects are approved, the company will spend up to $20 billion to build the export terminal and pipeline projects.
“FERC’s final approval of this project will unleash the additional natural gas export potential of the U.S. and the state of Texas, driving significant economic, energy, trade and environmental benefits for generations to come,” Cornyn wrote.
Turner cited different reasons. Months before Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, Turner had joined the Climate Mayors movement, where he is listed as one of four co-chairs. More than 400 U.S. mayors have pledged to uphold the terms of the Paris climate agreement, though President Donald Trump has vowed to pull the U.S. out of the international treaty. In his letter, Turner wrote that NextDecade will deliver longterm economic and environmental benefits.
“NextDecade’s Rio Grande LNG project will enable developed and emerging markets around the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by replacing carbon-intensive fuels with natural and other forms of cleaner energy,” Turner wrote in his letter. “The project will also provide energy producers across the state of Texas an important link to global markets and an opportunity to reduce wasteful flaring of valuable energy resources into the atmosphere.”
Turner’s support for the project comes less than four months after he addressed the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco where he presented the Houston Climate Action Plan and touted the Bayou City’s recovery and resiliency in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, a weather event whose severity environmentalists attribute to global warming.
“We need action that backs up talk, action that recognizes methane as a super-pollutant and that investing in fracked gas is the wrong way forward to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement as Turner promised to do,” Parras said.