The oil and gas industry is rushing to lock-in a future for fossil fuels with new production, pipelines, export terminals and petrochemical plants. This infrastructure buildout threatens to worsen the climate crisis and to expand its harms to people already disproportionately impacted by pollution—particularly historically marginalized Black and Brown communities along the Gulf of Mexico. We support and amplify local campaigns to stop these projects, prevent environmental injustice, and avoid irreversible climate impacts they would cause.
Ending new oil and gas extraction
Earthworks staff work hand-in-hand with frontline communities to end permitting of new onshore oil and gas extraction. We do this by using optical gas imaging cameras to reveal normally invisible pollution, making undeniable the health impacts of living near oil and gas production, showing how regulations are failing to protect communities, and explaining to the world that oil and gas needs to be kept in the ground to prevent climate catastrophe.
Preventing demand for new oil and gas extraction
Much of new oil production—especially in Texas and New Mexico’s Permian Basin—is exported. To get their product to market, oil and gas companies want to build more than 25 oil and gas export facilities across the U.S. Gulf Coast.
We work to prevent these export terminals by partnering with threatened communities site-by-site. We fight for environmental and economic justice as one of the leaders of the Permian-Gulf Coast Coalition to build a stronger, more connected movement across the region—from extraction to export. And we work to pressure the federal government to change policies that encourage oil and gas exports.
In addition to exports, the oil and gas industry is betting heavily on plastics to replace demand as cars and electricity generation turn to renewables. Petrochemical plants turn oil and gas products into the stuff plastic is made of. We work to oppose those plants by highlighting their health risks, and working as part of national coalitions like Break Free From Plastic and regional coalitions like People Over Petro in the Ohio River basin.
Watch Today
Film Premiere: Uncovering the Permian Climate Bomb
Watch our award-winning short film, Uncovering the Permian Climate Bomb, about a 22-year-old activist coming face to face with what is now the world’s largest source of climate pollution: the Texas Permian Basin.
