Local elected officials in the border city of Brownsville are receiving talking points and media strategy from the company developing Rio Grande LNG—the Central Park-sized liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant project being built in wetlands outside Port Isabel—as the company attempts to stymie a recent court order to halt its project, emails obtained by the Texas Observer show.
The company, the publicly traded Houston firm NextDecade, has helped Brownsville and Cameron County officials produce op-eds, testimonials, and media statements by writing them outright or furnishing talking points or data to use when responding to media requests. NextDecade has also coordinated with the City of Brownsville and Cameron County in their filing of amicus briefs in support of the LNG project.
NextDecade lost its Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) authorization to develop Rio Grande LNG in August, as a result of a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, after nearly a year of construction. The LNG plant is replacing 984 acres of wetlands northeast of Brownsville in the sensitive Laguna Madre area, a crucial habitat for migratory birds and ocelots separated from the Gulf by the Padre barrier island.
If built, the plant would liquefy and export natural gas from a fracking site near Kingsville, arriving by the yet-to-be-constructed 137-mile Rio Bravo Pipeline. The pipeline and the export plant are within the land claimed by the Carrizo/Comecrudo, a federally unrecognized tribe.
The court decision came in a lawsuit filed by the City of Port Isabel, the Sierra Club, the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, and Vecinos para el Bienestar de la Comunidad Costera, a group of residents from Port Isabel and Laguna Heights, a neighboring colonia.
The federal judges said that FERC had not properly measured Rio Grande LNG’s environmental justice impacts or considered air quality data from a nearby monitor when the regulator reauthorized (after a prior similar court ruling) the plant last year. “We appreciate the significant disruption [this decision] may cause the projects,” the judges wrote. “But that does not outweigh the seriousness of the Commission’s procedural defects.”
FERC needed to give people a chance to comment on environmental justice impacts, consider NextDecade’s proposed carbon capture and sequestration system, and more, in what is called a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS), according to the court order. FERC has already started the SEIS and is expected to finish in November 2025.
In response, NextDecade has made a website and deployed a new slogan, “Stand with Rio Grande LNG,” saying the court’s order was “overreaching,” among other disputed claims about how the ruling would impact Cameron County’s economy. The company has filed for a rehearing of the order with the same D.C. court, which has yet to say whether it will take up the case. If the order stands, it would stop the company from continuing construction at least until the SEIS is completed.
In the meantime, according to Sierra Club attorney Nathan Matthews, the company is technically permitted to continue construction until the appeals process wraps. If the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals doesn’t take up NextDecade’s appeal, the company has stated that it plans to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which could further extend the appeals process, keeping things in limbo and the construction ongoing. Either appellate court could also rule in the company’s favor and clear its path.
NextDecade repeatedly says on its website that the court decision is “unprecedented,” one that threatens the economic sustainability of Cameron County. That’s similar messaging to what local officials have been using when speaking in favor of the project to the media. Emails obtained in a records request by the Observer show that the similarities aren’t coincidental.
