LNG Terminals Are Dangerous To Your Health – CleanTechnica

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When we think of methane gas, we think of flaring and drilling operations that release it directly into the atmosphere. But there is an untold facet of the methane gas story that rarely gets much attention. The latest report from Greenpeace is entitled Permit To Kill -Potential Health and Economic Impacts from US LNG Export Terminal Permitted Emissions. That report was written in cooperation with Oil Change International, which says we have known for over a decade just how damaging fracking is to our health, but the health impacts of exporting fracked gas have often been overlooked. The US methane gas industry has been trying to greenwash its activities by arguing methane is the cleanest fuel available. There is some truth to that claim, as it does produce less carbon dioxide when burned than coal or oil, but the amount of methane that escapes into the atmosphere from well heads and pipelines more than offset any such advantage.

Methane gas is often condensed into a liquid by pressurizing it to form liquefied natural gas or LNG. The new report from Greenpeace USA and the Sierra Club shines a light on just how damaging LNG plants are to the environment and to human health. It claims the air pollution from existing LNG export terminals is estimated to cause 60 premature deaths a year and add about $1 billion in negative health impacts. At the current rate, by 2050, existing LNG terminals will have caused over 2000 premature deaths and caused $28.7 billion in total health costs.

LNG Plants Are A Danger To Human Health

It is about more than methane escaping from those facilities. LNG plants emit a toxic mix of carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds. According to the Environmental Health Project, studies have shown that those pollutants are associated with a range of health concerns including headaches, coughing, dizziness, and other respiratory illnesses. Exposure to fracked gasses and pollution can also irritate skin, eyes, nose, and lungs. Long term exposure to these pollutants can lead to heart disease, certain types of cancer, and damage to the reproductive system and internal organs.

Often, those worst affected are poor communities of color, who have faced decades of pollution from the fossil fuel industry, including at LNG terminals. For example, parishes and counties in and around Southwest Louisiana, where a cluster of LNG terminals are located, have the worst air pollution impacts per capita. At the national level, Black and Hispanic Americans respectively experience air pollution from LNG terminals at 151–170% and 110–129% the rate of white Americans. These deaths occur under existing rules and regulations because LNG export terminals are permitted to emit levels of air pollution that cause serious health harm for local communities. LNG terminals are allowed to pollute with the complicity of the regulators who are meant to protect public health.

In 2022, a review of regulatory documents by Reuters found that the huge LNG plant at Corpus Christi, Texas, belonging to Cheniere had “exceeded its permitted limits for emissions of pollutants such as soot, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) hundreds of times since it started up in 2018.” Instead of levying fines, the local regulator, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, granted Cheniere large increases in the amount of pollution that plant was allowed to dump into the environment. Last year the Louisiana Bucket Brigade reported those LNG facilities also under-reported and miscalculated pollution events.

Building More LNG Export Terminals Is Environmental Insanity

All this pollution could get worse if further LNG plants are built. Back in January, the Biden administration announced it would be pausing pending decisions on several LNG export application that would add many new terminals along the Gulf Coast areas of Texas and Louisiana. That decision has been condemned by the LNG industry but applauded by  by environmental advocates, but it is only a pause on further export applications, not a denial of applications that have already been approved.

According to Greenpeace USA and the Sierra Club, there are currently 7 operating LNG export terminals in the United States, with another 6 projects currently under construction and a further 8 planned that have already received regulatory approval but not yet started construction. All these were not impacted by the Biden “pause.” They estimate that if all the planned LNG terminals and expansion projects are built, the LNG industry would be responsible for 149 premature deaths and $2.33 billion in health costs per year. If all the proposed plants are built, those numbers would increase to 4,470 deaths and a staggering $62.2 billion in health costs by 2050.

For the planet and local population, the US needs to tackle the air pollution from existing LNG plants and stop further expansion, Oil Change International says. To stop the public health emergency from getting worse, OCI and the Sierra Club are recommending that the Department of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, as well as other agencies, “should reject any approvals or permits for LNG export projects, as well as related pipelines and compressor stations.”

In addition they say, “DOE and FERC should evaluate the cumulative impacts of air pollution from existing and the slate of planned LNG terminals when evaluating the impacts of any specific project on the surrounding communities.” The Environmental Protection Agency must also develop and enforce more robust controls on the cumulative impacts of air pollution for the most overburdened communities. Finally, they advocate for a phasing out of fossil fuel exports, with a commensurate increase in funding for global climate mitigation and adaptation to help importing nations transition to renewables and resist become dependence on LNG imports.

The Takeaway

Early this year, 170 scientists wrote to president Biden to urge him to reject plans to add new LNG terminals in the Gulf of Mexico. According to Food and Water Watch, the letter cited the enormous impact the proposal would have on global climate pollution — about 20 times that of the recently-approved Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. Original signers of the letter include noted climate and environmental scientists Rose Abramoff, Robert Howarth, Mark Jacobson, Peter Kalmus, Michael Mann, Sandra Steingraber, Farhana Sultana and Aradhna Tripati. The letter said in part:

“Taken together, if all U.S. projects in the permitting pipeline are approved, they could lead to 3.9 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually, which is larger than the entire annual emissions of the European Union.… We implore you to turn back from this course, reject [these] fossil fuel export projects, and put us on a rapid and just trajectory off fossil fuels.“

Bill McKibben added this thought. “People living nearby these enormous facilities have always known they were enormous, but in recent months the rest of us have gotten a much better idea of the scale. So much fracked gas is now pouring out through the Gulf that it wipes out the gains under the president’s IRA clean energy plans. Indeed, it wipes out all the emission reductions made since the turn of the century (emphasis added). It’s hard to imagine even fossil fuel apologists would approve such wholesale destruction of the environment if they know the truth. Now they have no excuse.”