(The Center Square) – The developers of a sprawling LNG export plant on the Texas coast challenged in court by local and environmental groups for more than a decade received the final approval by federal regulators and can begin construction on two new production units.
Potential legal challenges remain.
The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission voted March 12 to authorize NextDecade Corp. to begin construction on the fourth and fifth production units at the company’s 984-acre tract near the Gulf of America along the Brownsville Ship Channel. There is potential to increase the export facility’s annual output from 17.6 million tons to 27 million tons.
Houston-based NextDecade is now building the first three production units, also called “trains,” and expects to begin operating the first two of them in 2027 and the third in 2028.
“The authorization to proceed with Trains 4 and 5 is a critical milestone that reaffirms our commitment to providing global markets with reliable, Texas-produced energy,” said NextDecade Chairman and CEO, Matt Schatzman. “We are focused on continuing construction safely and on schedule to meet the growing demand for less carbon-intensive LNG.”
In the last six years, the permits needed to build the fourth and fifth trains were granted, challenged in court, revoked, and then reinstated.
NextDecade first submitted a formal application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in May 2016, and the project was initially approved in 2019. In 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled the federal regulator’s original environmental analyses were “deficient” and ordered a new study.
In August 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit cancelled Rio Grande’s construction permits entirely, which had never before happened to an LNG project. The appeals court ordered federal regulators to conduct a new environmental assessment due to procedural deficiencies and a failure to properly assess the project’s impact on marginalized communities near the export facility.
In August 2025, federal regulators concluded in the final assessment that while the Rio Grande LNG project would have “disproportionate and adverse” impacts on communities with environmental justice concerns, the overall effects would be “less than significant.”
Supporters of the Rio Grande project include Texas Republican U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz along with local leaders like Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr., a Democrat.
Cruz said after the ruling that the court was correct in restoring the permits. The senator said the court’s earlier decision to rescind the permits had “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.”
Since 2019, legal challenges to the project have been filed by a coalition that includes the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, which aims to protect ancestral lands in the Rio Grande Valley; the Port of Isabel, a town of about 5,000 people located approximately 3 miles east of the construction site; and the Sierra Club.
Port of Isabel City Administrator Jared Hockema said Wednesday that an LNG plant with high emissions levels could imperil the local economy.
“We have an ecotourism based economy in this area and it is an economy that is pretty successful – it generates a lot of employment and a lot of revenue, a lot of tax revenue for the state of Texas and for local governments, including Cameron County,” said Hockema.
Hockema notes robust tourism-driven sales at local restaurants allows many waitresses in the area to earn upwards of $50,000 annually, which typically isn’t possible in Brownsville, and that wages are also very strong in other sectors of the economy that cater to visitors.
“You can just leave the economy here alone and it will be successful,” said Hockema. “You’re jeopardizing that by building this plant.”
In December, the Port of Isabel and its partners argued in the D.C. appellate court that regulators had failed to consider NextDecade’s August 2024 abandonment of a promise to develop a carbon capture system at the Rio Grande site, which the company said would reduce emissions by 90%.
Treviño, now running for a sixth term in office, has recently emphasized a need for “vigilance” in protecting local resources, telling constituents in March that as the region grows, the county must balance industrial expansion with public accountability. When the Rio Grande project was first proposed in 2016, the judge voted for approval but cast the lone vote against tax abatements.
As the director of Emergency Management for Cameron County, Treviño now oversees the safety protocols for the facility he authorized a decade ago.
In response to a question about another large industrial project proposed for the Brownsville area, Treviño said in a statement on Saturday that as the region grows the county’s role is to balance industrial expansion with public accountability.
“We must be vigilant in protecting our land, our air, and our water,” said Treviño.
Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas Chairman Juan Mancias said the LNG plant and a natural gas pipeline nearby pose risks to his people’s ancestral lands.
The tribe’s ancestors lived in the Rio Grande River delta, which is home to a pre-Columbian village named Garcia Pasture, according to a report in the Louisiana Illuminator. Garcia Pasture, located about 1,000 feet from the Rio Grande export terminal, was identified in 2022 as a heritage site under threat and added to the World Monuments Watch, according to the Illuminator.
The Center Square was unsuccessful prior to publication getting comment from Mancias.
Saudi Aramco, Abu Dhabi’s ADNOC, and Paris-based TotalEnergies have signed 20-year contracts with NextDecade to purchase LNG produced by the fourth production unit at the Rio Grande export facility.
Other major industrial projects in the Brownsville area now in the planning stages include Texas LNG, an export facility that would have 4 million tons of capacity per year on a tract of land along the Brownsville Ship Channel adjacent to the Rio Grande construction site.
President Donald Trump was in Brownsville in early March to announce plans for an approximately $4 billion hydrogen-powered oil refinery that would be built in a partnership between Dallas-based America First Refining and Reliance Industries. It would be the first refinery built in the United States in 50 years.
