Texas LNG Fracked Gas Deal With Enbridge Spells Disaster for South Texas Communities and Environment

Brownsville, TX - Today, the Glenfarne Group's proposed Texas LNG project at the Port of Brownsville entered into a 20-year deal to buy 720 million cubic feet of fracked gas per day from Enbridge's existing Valley Crossing Pipeline. Enbridge made this deal even though Texas LNG still has no customers lined up to buy its fracked gas, making this project unlikely to move forward. Despite the fiscal unlikelihood of the Texas LNG project, this deal could be a major threat to the health and safety of communities in South Texas and will have devastating impacts on the local environment and global climate.

Enbridge, a Canadian fossil fuel corporation, has one of the worst safety and environmental records of any major pipeline company. The Valley Crossing Pipeline at the Port of Brownsville has already caused a sinkhole in the Rio Grande Valley. Enbridge was responsible for one of the largest inland oil spills in U.S. history, the disastrous 2010 tar sands pipeline spill in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which spilled more than a million gallons of oil and cost more than $1 billion to clean up. Between 1999 and 2010, Enbridge’s pipelines had more than 800 spills in the U.S. and Canada, leaking 6.8 million gallons of oil. In 2019, an Enbridge gas pipeline in Kentucky ruptured and caused an explosion that left one person dead and five others hospitalized, and an Enbridge pipeline explosion killed a man in East Texas in 2014. 

Texas LNG has had plans since 2015 to build their polluting 600-acre fracked gas export terminal at the Port of Brownsville. For the past six years, Rio Grande Valley locals have taken a strong stance against this company’s plans, and even got another proposed fracked gas project, Annova LNG, cancelled. Texas LNG had plans to bulldoze a federally recognized pre-Columbian Indigenous village and grave sites called “Garcia Pasture”, which led to the formation of an international movement, led in part by the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, to defend the sacred Native sites. By 2017, these organizing efforts influenced the eighth largest bank in the world, BNP Paribas, to drop support for the Texas LNG project.

Enbridge also has a growing track record of trampling over Indigenous lands and rights. In addition to having one of the worst safety records of any major pipeline company, Enbridge backed Minnesota law enforcement with over $2 million to crack down on Native American and environmental water protectors at Line 3 pipeline construction sites. Enbridge’s operations in Corpus Christi also face significant Indigenous opposition as the corporation wants to expand into sacred Native lands.

Emma Guevara, Brownsville Organizer with Sierra Club, issued the following statement:

“Here we have two major fossil fuel corporations with a history of encroaching on Indigenous lands and sacred sites joining forces. This is a major red flag. Texas LNG infringes on sacred Native ancestral lands, and would be built about a mile away from the City of Port Isabel and other Laguna Madre communities, which are very vocally opposed to LNG fracked gas projects in the Rio Grande Valley. Enbridge’s track-record of spills and explosions and lack of consultation with Indigenous communities only adds to the threat that Texas LNG already poses to our region. Neither Texas LNG nor Enbridge have ever consulted community or Indigenous groups on this project. We continue to stand together with our community against the risks of gas export projects and this corporate power grab.”