(The Center Square ) – Billions of dollars worth of investment and thousands of jobs are coming to the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) after Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) projects were approved by the federal government.
This is after the Biden administration implemented policies to halt oil and natural gas permits nationwide and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last August vacated authorizations for LNG projects in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
In response, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, led a bicameral and bipartisan group last year expressing support for LNG development in the RGV. Cruz, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño, Jr., also argued the court’s “unprecedented” revocation of already issued permits created “a new reality that threatens thousands of jobs, undermines economic growth in Texas, and, according to a former Obama Administration official, even puts future investment in renewable energy infrastructure at risk.”
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2023 had approved the construction and operation of Rio Grande LNG’s proposed LNG terminal project, Rio Grande LNG Terminal, and Rio Bravo Pipeline Company’s proposed pipeline project, Rio Bravo Pipeline Project, but three judges on the court vacated the approvals.
The Rio Grande LNG Project will develop, own, operate and maintain a natural gas pipeline system to access natural gas from the Agua Dulce Hub and an LNG export facility in south Texas. It’s slated to export 27 million tons of LNG a year to the global market. The Rio Grande LNG Terminal Project will provide LNG for truck transport and fueling operations.
The projects will create thousands of jobs and bring more than $18 billion in investment to South Texas, officials in support of the projects argue.
Fast forward to 2025, two months after President Donald Trump was sworn into office, the court reinstated FERC’s 2023 approvals.
In response, Cruz said the court “was right to reexamine its previous decision and restore these permits, which had already been issued and should never have been vacated.” The court’s decision last year “jeopardized 7,000 high-paying jobs and $24 billion in investment in the Rio Grande Valley, set a dangerous precedent for energy infrastructure development and investment nationwide, and needed to be revisited.”
Fast forward to this July, and FERC issued an environmental impact statement concluding “the projects would result in less than significant impacts.”
On August 29, FERC issued a final rule authorizing Rio Grande LNG Terminal construction to move forward. The rule states that the project “is not inconsistent with the public interest under section 3 of the Natural Gas Act (NGA), and the Rio Bravo Pipeline Project is required by the public convenience and necessity under section 7 of the NGA.”
Cruz praised the FERC approval saying the new projects would strengthen “Texas’s energy leadership. Texas is the energy capital of the world, and I am proud to fight to ensure it stays that way.”
In order to prevent a court from revoking permits after they were already issued, Cruz, Cornyn and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, all Republicans from Houston, introduced the Protect LNG Act earlier this year.
The bill would prevent courts from halting LNG permits when a lawsuit is filed and require that the cases only be filed in the circuit court jurisdiction where the LNG facility is located, not the location of a federal agency that issues the requested permits. It also includes timelines for lawsuits among other stipulations, The Center Square reported.
Texas lawmakers led the charge to support LNG development in south Texas as Texas continues to lead the U.S. in oil and natural gas production and emissions reductions.
The U.S. leads the world in LNG exports, led by the Gulf states of Texas and Louisiana. In 2017, the U.S. became a net exporter of natural gas for the first time since 1957, “primarily because of increased LNG exports,” according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency.
Nearly 25% of U.S. natural gas reserves are located in Texas and 30% of the largest hundred natural gas fields in the U.S. are in Texas, The Center Square reported.
The LNG export industry has become “a vital engine of economic growth and infrastructural development for Texas,” Texans for Natural Gas, a project of the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association, argues. It “contributes a whopping $43.8 billion toward the U.S. GDP, and generates $11 billion in tax and royalty revenues for local, state and federal governments,” The Center Square reported.
