Media Contact:
Rebekah Staub, Earthworks, rstaub@earthworks.org
WASHINGTON — On July 5, while the Texas Coast braced for Hurricane Beryl, the Maritime Administration and U.S. Coast Guard released the final environmental impact statement (FEIS) for Texas GulfLink, a massive new oil export project proposal which fails to account for the full breadth of impacts it will have on communities and the environment.
The project is proposed in Brazoria County, Texas, where Hurricane Beryl – the earliest category 5 hurricane recorded in the Atlantic – caused extensive power outages, flooding, and evacuations despite being a category 1 storm when it hit Texas.
Because of extensive recovery efforts underway in Brazoria County, which was declared a federal emergency disaster, local groups and environmental organizations sent a letter to the agencies on July 12, urging them to extend the comment deadline for public input, which is currently Aug. 19. Pollution from fossil fuel projects worsens the climate crisis and can make hurricanes more intense and more frequent.
Texas GulfLink is one of more than 20 new oil and gas export projects proposed in the U.S. Gulf South, the largest buildout of fossil fuel projects in the world. The project would pump 1 million barrels per day of domestically produced crude oil to buyers overseas. Owned by Sentinel Midstream, the project would consist of an offshore platform, a 28-mile-long underwater pipeline, an onshore storage terminal taking up 319 acres of land, and two new onshore crude oil pipelines. If licensed and operated at full capacity for its expected 30-year lifespan, GulfLink would be responsible for 3.8 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions once the transported oil is burned. Texas GulfLink is proposed just seven miles from Sea Port Oil Terminal, another proposed massive oil export project the Biden administration quietly approved this year that would emit the equivalent to nearly 90 coal-fired power plants in planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
Residents of Brazoria County have been pushing against the project since it was first proposed in 2019 because low-income communities and communities of color in the region are already overburdened with existing hazardous facilities and pipelines that harm human health and ruin the coastal environment. Local elected officials including Port commissioners and Jones Creek city council have also expressed many concerns about the project’s safety.
In response to the FEIS being released, frontline leaders and allied organizations released the following statements:
Local Organizations and Frontline Leaders:
“As a healthcare worker, mother, and resident of Freeport that has opposed this project since 2019 along with many other residents, I am disappointed in this questionable, non-transparent, and incomplete FEIS,” said Melanie Oldham, resident of Freeport and founder of Better Brazoria. “We continue to not have all our concerns completely answered by MARAD. As an overburdened, industry-heavy area we have legitimate concerns about the GulfLink project fouling our air and water in a severe nonattainment county for ozone. Recently the Biden Administration sadly approved the SPOT oil export project near our communities and families. We can’t comprehend why Biden and his agencies would even consider approving this GulfLink FEIS and project. If that happens, we know that the probability of an oil spill will double and harm our marine life. We plead that President Biden and his agencies adhere to our country’s climate and environmental justice policies and deny the Texas GulfLink project.”
“Someone needs to be the adult in the room and think about the laws of the people instead of a global economy and some Big Oil executive’s pocket because you’re killing our kids and you’re killing our future,” said Manning Rollerson, resident of Freeport and founder of Freeport Haven Project. “So-called investments have not grown the city of Freeport, but it has made the city a poverty area that is very dangerous and toxic to human life. The suffering is so bad. The disease is so bad. The childhood illnesses are so bad. There’s no accountability from natural gas plants or oil refineries. It is time to go to renewables and stop killing us with fossil fuels. Someone has to make a change.”
“As a mother of six living on the Louisiana Gulf Coast, I am deeply concerned about the proposed Texas GulfLink oil export project,” said Roishetta Sibley Ozane, founder of The Vessel Project of Louisiana. “The recent release of the final environmental impact statement raises serious alarms. Construction in critical habitats and the disregard for downstream use of crude oil are troubling. Our community is already burdened with hazardous facilities, and we cannot bear more harm. We urge policymakers to prioritize our environment and health over short-term gains. Our children are getting sick, our families are dying. Enough is enough.”
“This is insanity,” said Riley Bennington, Field Organizer with Texas Campaign for the Environment. “We literally just experienced a hurricane – our homes are flooded, our power has been out, our infrastructure has been devastated – and the federal government thinks it’s a perfectly fine idea to put not one but two massive deepwater oil terminals right off our shores? Have these fossil fools learned nothing? Secretary Pete and President Biden should be ashamed.”
“Hurricane Beryl hit the upper Texas coast as a category 1 storm and did extensive damage to homes, powerline, dunes and other structures,” said Joanie Steinhaus, Ocean Program Director for Turtle Island Restoration Network. “Imagine the additional devastation an oil spill would have caused to the community that is already overburdened with industrial pollution. People have the right to comment on a project that will impact their health and forever change the landscape. Do the right thing and extend the public comment period.”
Allied Organizations:
“The agency assumes that Texas GulfLink and the recently licensed Sea Port Oil Terminal would replace existing nearshore oil export facilities and result in largely the same emissions,” said Devorah Ancel, a senior attorney for the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program. “But, in fact, executives tout to their investors that existing operations will keep operating even if massive deepwater facilities come online. GulfLink would absolutely result in a major increase in greenhouse gas emissions as well as serious pollution and safety concerns that are top of mind for the communities who are recovering from an intense category 1 hurricane that hit right near where the pipeline infrastructure would carry millions of barrels of oil to an offshore platform. Massive increases in oil exports mean more severe climate change, extreme weather events, and water and air pollution for the Gulf of Mexico and its frontline communities. Our Gulf ecosystems, endangered wildlife, and the health of thousands of residents will continue to pay the price for this short-sighted decision-making.”
“The FEIS wrongly dismisses the harm from GulfLink’s greenhouse gas emissions and uses an inadequate method and baseless assumptions to estimate the greenhouse emissions and assert that GulfLink would have little or no impact on global greenhouse gas emissions,” said Kelsey Crane, senior policy advocate at Earthworks. “MARAD presumes, without justification, that deepwater ports would simply replace crude oil exports from nearshore operations on a one-to-one basis. These unsupported assumptions have served as the basis of MARAD’s project reviews and must be re-evaluated and corrected to accurately evaluate each project’s impacts. Neither SPOT nor GulfLink’s backers, or other major crude exporters, stated their intentions that existing nearshore operations/capacities to export crude oil would be eliminated with the addition of offshore ports. It is likely that if approved, deepwater ports would operate in addition to existing near shore export operations. As a result, there will likely be a significant net increase in crude oil export volumes, which would mean more oil drilling, more risks of oil spills on land and offshore, increased ozone pollution for onshore environmental justice communities, and worsening impacts from climate change.”
“The time to act on climate is now, and approving GulfLink would make it significantly harder to reach our climate goals,” said Mike Brown, attorney at Earthjustice, which has represented groups fighting the proposal. “As we documented in an expert report we filed with the federal agencies involved, GulfLink or projects like it are massive enough to influence global oil prices and production, leading to tens of millions of additional, yearly greenhouse gas emissions from burning fracked oil that we simply cannot afford.”