The Rio Grande LNG terminal that NextDecade Corporation wants to build between State Highway 4 and the Brownsville Ship Channel is the subject of a public open house being held Thursday, April 13, in Port Isabel.
LNG stands for “liquefied natural gas.” NextDecade is nearing a final investment decision (FID) on whether to proceed with plans for a facility on 984 acres at the port to liquefy natural gas (transported to the facility via the proposed Rio Brave Pipeline) and export it to foreign markets. The terminal would directly impact 761 acres, according to the company.
The first phase of the project would cost an estimated $11.5 billion to build and consist of three “trains,” or individual liquefaction units, together capable of producing up to 16 million metric tons of LNG per year. Fully built out with five trains, the facility would have a production capacity of 27 million metric tons annually.
NextDecade, which said it expects to make a Final Investment Decision before the end of June, on its website describes Rio Grande LNG as “the largest privately funded infrastructure project in the state of Texas.”
The April 13 open house takes place at the Port Isabel Event & Cultural Center, 309 Railroad St. in two sessions: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., and 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
The nonprofit, grass-roots environmental group Save RGV (formerly Save RGV From LNG), plans a protest during the evening session and invites volunteers and speakers to attend. The group has long opposed the project due to the environmental damage it predicts will result along with negative impacts on safety, quality of life and the area’s fishing and recreation economies.
NextDecade touts the project as environmentally responsible. Its website states: “By combining emissions reduction associated with our carbon capture and storage project, responsibly sourced gas, and our pledge to use net-zero electricity, Rio Grande LNG is expected to produce a lower carbon intensive LNG for the world.”
Commissioners with the Brownsville Navigation District, the port’s governing body, on March 15 approved a resolution to preserve the Las Lomas wetlands within the port’s 40,000 acres. NextDecade has committed to establishing a permanent conservation easement of 1,500 acres of Las Lomas upon announcement of a positive FID — that it’s moving forward with construction of the project.
The company said Rio Grande LNG’s overall environmental mitigation plan entails conserving more than 4,000 acres, including Las Lomas, 1,530 acres of the Miradores Mitigation Site (370 acres to be restored to wetlands and the rest to native thorn scrub habitat), and 1,050 acres associated with the Dulaney Farms tract, protected in coordination with The Conservation Fund in 2021 to expand the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge ocelot habitat area.
Jim Chapman, a Save RGV board member and president of Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, said the Las Lomas conservation project has been planned for years, part of NextDecade’s application for a Section 404 Permit, required under the Clean Water Act “before dredged or fill material may be discharged into waters of the United States.”
Save RGV wants Las Lomas to be protected in perpetuity but is still and always will be firmly opposed to Rio Grande LNG, he said.
“It doesn’t matter what mitigation Rio Grande LNG does, we are against it,” Chapman said. “There’s no mitigation that will make up for the harm that it’s going to do. … Other than construction jobs, which go away, Rio Grande LNG is bringing nothing good to the Valley.”
As for Save RGV’s April 13 protest, it won’t change the trajectory of the project but it will send a message, he said.
“It’s not going to change any outcome obviously, but we don’t want Rio Grande or the public to think that there’s no opposition to this,” Chapman said.
Rio Grande LNG said it will hold additional open houses Brownsville, Harlingen and the Upper Valley in coming months.
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