Speaker 1: It's not much fun living next door to a liquefied
Speaker 1: natural gas terminal, but you know it's less fun being
Speaker 1: out of a job. Today on Parts for a Billion,
Speaker 1: we talk about the bad options based by communities in
Speaker 1: the Gulf Coast where exporting natural gas seems to be
Speaker 1: the wave of the future. Hello, and welcome back once
Speaker 1: I get to Parts for a Billion, where I'm on
Speaker 1: a podcast from Bloomberg Law. I'm your host, David Schultz.
Speaker 1: So this is yet another story about the uneasy relationship
Speaker 1: between the fossil fuel industry and the communities in which
Speaker 1: it operates. And the community in this case is southwestern Louisiana.
Speaker 1: This part of the country has been home to a
Speaker 1: ton of energy infrastructure for a while now, but it
Speaker 1: could be seeing a lot more facilities pop up in
Speaker 1: the very near future. And those facilities are LNG terminals.
Speaker 1: Llen G, of course, stands for liquefied natural gas. These
Speaker 1: are places where natural gas gets cooled too super low
Speaker 1: temperatures just how low we'll get to you in a second,
Speaker 1: and that allows it to be exported across the globe.
Speaker 1: The Biden administration is not the biggest fan of the
Speaker 1: fossil fuel industry. But it's granted approval to potentially double
Speaker 1: or even triple the number of these new LANG terminals
Speaker 1: along the Gulf coast. And it's easy to see why.
Speaker 1: Regardless of what you think about the impact fossil fuels
Speaker 1: have on the environment, exporting natural gas means helping to
Speaker 1: reduce other countries reliance on Russian gas. But what does
Speaker 1: this mean for the Gulf coast communities that rely on
Speaker 1: the fossil fuel industry for jobs. Bloomberg Law reporter Daniel
Speaker 1: Moore traveled down to southwest Louisiana to talk to the
Speaker 1: industry and to the folks in these communities, and what
Speaker 1: he found was, well, a whole lot of ambivalence. We'll
Speaker 1: get to that in a second, but first I asked
Speaker 1: Daniel to get me up to speed on exactly how
Speaker 1: LNG is made. Yeah. So, natural gas when it's drilled,
Speaker 1: when it moves through our country's pipeline system, is in
Speaker 1: gaseous form, of course, as the name implies. But when
Speaker 1: it reaches the terminal, it is piped in into this
Speaker 1: LNG terminal and it is basically refrigerated to negative two
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit. Which is about as cold
Speaker 1: as the dark side of the moon, so it is
Speaker 1: very very cold. So that temperature renders the gas a liquid.
Speaker 1: It's compressed by about six hundred times, so it's really
Speaker 1: really compressed, turns it into a liquid. It is stored
Speaker 1: for period of time, then it is put on a
Speaker 1: vessel shipped around the world in liquid form, and then
Speaker 1: it is shipped to another country where it is regasified,
Speaker 1: put in that country's pipeline system. And that's the whole
Speaker 1: point of liquifying the natural gases that it makes it
Speaker 1: possible to send elsewhere, you know, not just across the country,
Speaker 1: but also to any place in the world, right correct, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that could be a good thing environmentally because, as
Speaker 1: we've talked about on this podcast before, natural gas has
Speaker 1: a much lower carbon footprint than coal, which is what
Speaker 1: is used to fuel a lot of power plants. In fact,
Speaker 1: here is Brian. He's with Sempra, a company that makes
Speaker 1: ellengy terminals. The United States has reduced greenhouse gas emissions
Speaker 1: more than any other country on the planet, and it's
Speaker 1: done that through two primary things. One is switching from
Speaker 1: coal to gas and power generation and other applications. Industrial
Speaker 1: applications as well, and then adding renewables. The majority of
Speaker 1: those carbon production has actually come from this coal to
Speaker 1: gas switching kind of piece. We really do view ellen
Speaker 1: g as the way to export what what I know
Speaker 1: some have called it, I certainly have called the world's
Speaker 1: most successfully demonstrated greenhouse gas mitigation policy tool. So we
Speaker 1: just heard him talk about how great it is for
Speaker 1: the environment because it produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions, which
Speaker 1: I gather is true. But better does not necessarily mean good, right,
Speaker 1: can you get into to that. I mean, we're still
Speaker 1: it's still producing greenhouse gases, right, Everything is on a
Speaker 1: sliding scale, right, So natural gas Brian is repeating the
Speaker 1: the core argument that the gas industry has made for
Speaker 1: several years now, which is that it's largely displacing dirtier
Speaker 1: burning fuels like coal and oil in the United States
Speaker 1: and around the world. But throughout this system, you still
Speaker 1: have to drill for gas, you have to transport via pipeline,
Speaker 1: you have to build more compressor stations to move the gas,
Speaker 1: and all along the way there could be leaks of methane,
Speaker 1: which is the primary component of natural gas, and methane
Speaker 1: is a much much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide is. And so while you have while it may
Speaker 1: be true that at at power plant facility burning natural
Speaker 1: gas will cause fewer air emission impacts than burning coal,
Speaker 1: you do have to take into account the entire system,
Speaker 1: and then we're just talking about climate. You know, there
Speaker 1: are other environmental impacts besides greenhouse gases. You know, there's
Speaker 1: air pollution which really affects the people who live near
Speaker 1: these facilities, and which will will meet a few of
Speaker 1: those in just a bit. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean
Speaker 1: there are a few different concern around Ellengy itself, which
Speaker 1: is that one, it consumes so much energy that they
Speaker 1: actually have to build often a power plant on site
Speaker 1: that burns natural gas. Of course, so you have kind
Speaker 1: of natural gas burning going on to produce the electricity
Speaker 1: to refrigerate the natural gas. You also have concerns about flaring,
Speaker 1: which would be venting off, you know, gases to prevent
Speaker 1: explosions or to prevent anything else operationally from happening at
Speaker 1: the plant that would that would cause harm to the plant.
Speaker 1: So that they often vent these refrigerant gases off, They
Speaker 1: vent carbon dioxide, they vent methane, and that's a big
Speaker 1: concern if you're living nearby. I mean that causes you know,
Speaker 1: air quality impacts and obviously there's a big torch visually
Speaker 1: right next to your property if that happened. So there
Speaker 1: there are local concerns around Ellengy as well. Well. That said,
Speaker 1: you had a pretty eye catching map in your story
Speaker 1: that you you just published on this that showed the
Speaker 1: locations all of the Llengy terminals that are currently built
Speaker 1: on the Gulf Coast and then all of the Llengy
Speaker 1: terminals that are approved or awaiting approval from the federal government.
Speaker 1: And it's like four or five times more. Like the
Speaker 1: amount of these facilities that are going to be built
Speaker 1: is so much higher than are currently there. What's going
Speaker 1: on here? I mean, it seems like this has got
Speaker 1: to be a concerted effort from the Biden administration to
Speaker 1: build more of these terminals. Right. This actually goes back
Speaker 1: to fracking, which is the drilling technique that unlocked all
Speaker 1: this natural gas. And this goes back to probably about
Speaker 1: the mid two thousands when fracking started to unlock a
Speaker 1: lot of this natural gas. This was cheap, abundant supplies
Speaker 1: of fuel. It caused a lot of US utilities to
Speaker 1: switch from coal to gas and thereby lower emissions from
Speaker 1: the power sector and fracking and natural gas has kind
Speaker 1: of had this bipartisan support from lawmakers from multiple presidential
Speaker 1: administrations get play out during the Obama administration originally, and
Speaker 1: so the industry, largely from these market forces, started looking abroad.
Speaker 1: It started looking to export this gas because we had
Speaker 1: so much of it. In fact, a lot of these
Speaker 1: export terminals were built as import terminals to begin with,
Speaker 1: and they just flipped it to exporting. I think one
Speaker 1: of the people that you spoke to who works in
Speaker 1: the energy industry said about that, we got it so
Speaker 1: wrong that we got it right. Yeah, that was Brian,
Speaker 1: And Brian's point was market forces created this ocean of
Speaker 1: natural gas. It was cheap for policymakers. It was hard
Speaker 1: to argue against something that was cutting power sector emissions
Speaker 1: and was affordable. And a lot of these terminals were
Speaker 1: approved under their prior administration. I think they're about fourteen
Speaker 1: right now that have been approved and are just waiting
Speaker 1: to be built, and there are another seven proposed to
Speaker 1: federal regulators under the Abiden administration. But to your point,
Speaker 1: the Biden administration is walking a tight rope between further
Speaker 1: entrenching gas and fossil fuels, which you know a lot
Speaker 1: of their supporters don't don't want, versus energy security and
Speaker 1: the fact that our energy system right now depends a
Speaker 1: lot of natural gas, to say nothing of Europe and
Speaker 1: the situation there. But you went down to Louisiana and
Speaker 1: you visited a few of these terminals, and you talk
Speaker 1: to people who live near them, and let's hear from
Speaker 1: one of those. Uh, this is John Ahlaire. He lives
Speaker 1: next to one of these torches that you just described.
Speaker 1: You can't operate like that's burning money, do you know?
Speaker 1: You see how much natural gas it takes to burn
Speaker 1: their flair. That's all natural gas plus liquids and pollutants
Speaker 1: that are heavier hydrocarbons is what I'm saying, that are
Speaker 1: being burn That's they burned enough in the last three
Speaker 1: weeks to fuel the whole city like Charles for a year.
Speaker 1: I get the sense that living next to an Ellengy
Speaker 1: terminal is not great. Can you tell me more about
Speaker 1: what it was like and what the people who you
Speaker 1: spoke to, what their lads are like. Yeah, it's definitely
Speaker 1: generates some different perspectives. So for John, he was right
Speaker 1: across the river from an Llengy terminal that just started
Speaker 1: operating a few weeks ago by the time I talked
Speaker 1: to him, and it was flaring all the time, and
Speaker 1: that isn't something that usually happens, as I understand it,
Speaker 1: at Llengy terminals, but because this had just started, perhaps
Speaker 1: they were having some operational difficulties. In fact, the state
Speaker 1: suggested that there were some operational issues as they were
Speaker 1: starting up and had to flare a lot of gas.
Speaker 1: And so at night, this flare was lighting up the coastline.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's not a lot of population around that
Speaker 1: terminal and there's not a lot of light pollution or
Speaker 1: anything like that. So it was a very stark thing
Speaker 1: to have this this torch lighting up the night sky.
Speaker 1: And for people like John who moved to that area
Speaker 1: for you know, the wetlands and kind of the wildlife
Speaker 1: and bird watching, having something like that can be a problem.
Speaker 1: And also, uh, your John is very concerned about that
Speaker 1: paving over habitat in that area as well. And so
Speaker 1: there's another lleng terminal proposed directly next to him on
Speaker 1: his side of the river, and he's very concerned about
Speaker 1: you know, his property getting flooded during hurricanes and you know,
Speaker 1: slowly watching the ocean come under his property and destroy
Speaker 1: this habitat. And that's that's one of his concerns. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and you know what, it just occurred to me. You know,
Speaker 1: I earlier said, you know that living next to an
Speaker 1: LLENG terminal is not great, and from John's respective, it
Speaker 1: certainly isn't. But actually, you know, another thing that I'm
Speaker 1: realizing from your story is that for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: it is because LLENG terminals provide a lot of jobs.
Speaker 1: And this is a part of the country. You know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Gulf Coast that has been devastated
Speaker 1: by natural disasters after natural disasters. So you know, maybe
Speaker 1: I spoke too soon. Maybe this is an economic lifeline.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about that sort of push and pull
Speaker 1: where people are concerned about the environmental impacts, but also
Speaker 1: are you glad that they have this economic engine in
Speaker 1: their community. Yeah, that's the other perspective, And that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I wanted to go to this part
Speaker 1: of the country specifically, because you have these hurricanes that
Speaker 1: have rolled in over and over again, and a community
Speaker 1: like Cameron or like Charles is still rebuilding two years later,
Speaker 1: following following the most recent round of hurricanes, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people in Cameron that had their restaurants or
Speaker 1: homes destroyed, or motels or hotels. C LNG see this
Speaker 1: plant that has just started up there as a lifeline
Speaker 1: for the community. One of the people I spoke with
Speaker 1: was running a food truck and he had his restaurant
Speaker 1: destroyed two years ago, and he was fielding a very
Speaker 1: busy lunchtime crowd of LNG workers and actually going into
Speaker 1: the plant and delivering these catered lunches, and his words were,
Speaker 1: the only thing keeping us alive is the LNG. So
Speaker 1: people have very different perspectives. And if you view it
Speaker 1: as an economic development measure to provide dollars to the
Speaker 1: community to provide jobs, it's a very powerful argument. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that one of the people that you spoke
Speaker 1: to that summarize this really well is Jeames Hyatt. He's
Speaker 1: an environmental activist but also used to work in the
Speaker 1: oil and gas industry, and he really talked about the
Speaker 1: ambivalence there that you know that this is maybe not
Speaker 1: good for the community in one sense, but in the
Speaker 1: other sense it's inevitable this is going to happen. So
Speaker 1: let's hear from him, and I should say you spoke
Speaker 1: to him in a coffee shop where because it's Louisiana,
Speaker 1: of course they're going to be playing some jazz music.
Speaker 1: And that's the same. I think for most people here,
Speaker 1: it's not that they love all in a gas. They
Speaker 1: love the paycheck, the time off, the ability has been
Speaker 1: with their family and and we still drive caught. So
Speaker 1: until we get to the other side of this where
Speaker 1: we don't need that fuel that I guess that's the
Speaker 1: thing is so so the industry that's here is going
Speaker 1: to probably be here for a while until we you know,
Speaker 1: while we're transitioning and shifting, well, we don't need is
Speaker 1: to build out seven more facilities to export this gas.
Speaker 1: So to put a sort of to put a big
Speaker 1: bow on this, I guess it seems like a very ambivalent,
Speaker 1: complicated situation, but it seems like it's moving in one direction.
Speaker 1: You know, you have the US exporting wanting you to
Speaker 1: export more natural gas, and especially given what happened in
Speaker 1: the Ukraine earlier this year, you know, we had sanctions
Speaker 1: on Russia and sanctions on Russian energy. The demand for
Speaker 1: US exports of natural gas is only going in one direction.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like there's any way that the community here,
Speaker 1: the environmental activists that want to stop this from happening,
Speaker 1: can given that all the economic signals are pushing in
Speaker 1: the opposite direction. Yeah, it's definitely an uphill battle. And
Speaker 1: James talked about that quite a bit. He's a former
Speaker 1: oil refinery worker actually in Lake Charles and has a
Speaker 1: lot of friends who still work in the industry. A
Speaker 1: lot of those workers see ellen G as a cleaner
Speaker 1: job compared to again going back to cut of the
Speaker 1: sliding scale of energy compared to an oil refinery, and
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways it can be. And so
Speaker 1: to start pushing that boulder up a hill, to start
Speaker 1: pushing back against an industry that is so entrenched in
Speaker 1: this region of the country, certainly around the Houston area
Speaker 1: in southwest Louisiana, it's a it's a tough it's a
Speaker 1: tough challenge, and there's not a whole lot happening in
Speaker 1: the way of clean energy jobs, and unions have a
Speaker 1: tough time kind of making headway in that region compared
Speaker 1: to other parts of the country, and so making that
Speaker 1: environmental justice argument is very difficult, but also, you know,
Speaker 1: it kind of beat that definition of environmental justice in
Speaker 1: another sense because you have these communities that have been
Speaker 1: dealing with this industry for such a long time. And
Speaker 1: that's why I think it's a really interesting policy question
Speaker 1: for regulators. Well, let's give the last word to Rocheta Ozane.
Speaker 1: She's another environmental activist who you spoke to, and she
Speaker 1: summarized it exactly where she said, you know, we want
Speaker 1: clean energy, we want renewable energy jobs, but they have
Speaker 1: to be good jobs. They have to be reunion jobs.
Speaker 1: Let's hear from her, and we need to show people
Speaker 1: proof that water energy and solar energy and wind energy
Speaker 1: that we need to show people proof that it works
Speaker 1: and that the same people they go and get the
Speaker 1: tchining to work in the industries are the same folk
Speaker 1: they could work in these jobs, but they have to
Speaker 1: be good paying jobs and they have to re unionized
Speaker 1: job so that people would even be interested in switching.
Speaker 1: But we don't even have that to offer folks right now.
Speaker 1: So we are not at the point oh shutting down
Speaker 1: anything or stopping anything from coming, because all people see
Speaker 1: is that you're trying to stop jobs from coming here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we don't have anything to offer to replace it,
Speaker 1: all right. That was Rochetta Ozane, an environmental activist in Louisiana.
Speaker 1: And also that was Daniel Moore, a Bloomberg Cloud reporter
Speaker 1: here talking about his trip to the Gulf Coast. Thank
Speaker 1: you Daniel talking with us, Thanks for having me, And
Speaker 1: that'll do it for today's episode of Parts Pervilion. If
Speaker 1: you want more environmental news, check us out on Twitter.
Speaker 1: We used the handle at environment I'm at David B. Schultz.
Speaker 1: That's b as in leze le bonton rule. Today's episode
Speaker 1: of Parts for a Billion was produced by myself, David Schultz.
Speaker 1: Parts per Billion was created by Jessica Coombs and Rachel
Speaker 1: Dagle and it's edited by Zach Sherwood and Chuck McCutcheon.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Josh Thanks everyone for listening. The
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