In Louisiana, natural gas terminals have destroyed communities. Trump wants to build more

For James Hiatt, founder of the environmental justice organization For a Better Bayou, the effects of liquefied natural gas have been obvious for years. In southern Louisiana where he lives, LNG terminals—which chill natural gas to its liquid state, so it can be shipped around the world—spew out toxic emissions like carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and methane. Their smells tinge the air, causing headaches the closer people are to the source, along with serious health issues like heart and respiratory diseases and cancer. 

Terminal construction also threatens the physical environment, paving over local wetlands, polluting waterways, and increasing road traffic. Then there’s the economic impact. Though proponents of LNG have said these terminals bring jobs and economic growth, others contest those benefits. For one, LNG terminals get millions in property tax exemptions—in Cameron Parish, that’s amounted to an average of $700 million a year in forgone property taxes from 2011 to 2016 alone.

“If LNG brings economic prosperity, I invite you to come visit Cameron and see what economic prosperity looks like here,” Hiatt says he told his local representatives who support such terminals. Houses there are still destroyed from previous hurricanes, and pollution and water shortages disrupt daily life. “The streets should be paved with gold at this point for the amount of money these companies have extracted from this place.” 

And if Donald Trump is elected in November, that industry—and all those effects—are set to expand even more. 

Trump’s first term expanded LNG

Trump’s first term in office had disastrous climate effects. From 2017 to 2021, his administration rolled back more than 100 environmental rules—including safety rules for the trail transport of LNG, which is highly flammable. He also expanded LNG in a few ways, streamlining the permitting process and extending the terms of LNG export authorizations, allowing them to go through to 2050 (previously, the terms lasted 20 years).

“During this administration, U.S. LNG exports have more than quadrupled, putting the United States among the top three LNG exporters in the world,” then-Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said in an October 2020 release. Trump approved more than 20 new long-term LNG exports to other countries. From January 2017 to January 2021, LNG exports increased fivefold.

“In the Trump administration, we saw an unfettered build out of LNG exports and rubber stamping of permits to keep building more gas exports to ship more gas overseas, at a time when we know we have to do everything we can to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis and put more investments in clean and renewable energy,” says Mahyar Sorour, director of Beyond Fossil Fuels Policy at Sierra Club. 

Liquefied natural gas has been a part of the energy sector for decades, but for years the U.S. primarily imported LNG from other countries. The U.S. only began exporting LNG in 2016, when the Sabine Pass export terminal was built in Cameron Parish, Louisiana (the first LNG export terminal built in the lower 48 states).

Since then, the U.S. has become the largest natural gas exporter in the world, sending it primarily to Europe and Asia. There are now eight LNG export facilities in the U.S., mostly along the Gulf coast in Louisiana and Texas (plus seven under construction, and about 12 more approved terminals). Demand for LNG has ramped up in recent years, and is expected to keep growing, as countries look to move away from coal—and natural gas production has spiked because of the boom in fracking (LNG is fracked gas cooled to its liquid state).

A Second Trump Term means even more 

If Trump were to win this November, a second Trump term would mean more of the same. “I will approve the [LNG] export terminals on my very first day back,” he said at a rally earlier this year. On the campaign trail, Trump has already shared plans to increase LNG exports, primarily to China, and to cut regulations for the industry.

Project 2025 details a plan to “ensure that LNG export applications are reviewed and approved expeditiously,” and suggests that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission “should not use environmental issues like climate change as a reason to stop LNG projects.”

In contrast, the Biden administration announced a pause on LNG terminal approvals, a landmark moment that—even as it faces issues in the courts—is seen as a step toward ending our dependence on fossil fuels. That pause was meant to allow the Department of Energy time to update its climate and economic analysis of such terminals. (Oil and gas production has still grown under Biden, even as the administration has focused on clean energy and made climate strides). 

“During the Trump administration, the economic and the environmental studies were woefully inadequate, which is why the [Biden] administration took the common sense decision to update those, to ensure we are using the latest science . . . and ensuring that environmental justice be a key factor in how the Department of Energy wants to authorize these gas exports,” Sorour says. “All of that would be reversed under a Trump administration.”

What that means for Americans

Much of the conversation about how Trump would expand LNG if back in office has focused on what that means for the United States’ relationship with China. Hiatt, meanwhile, focuses on the local impact—and even if some voters don’t care about the pollution in Louisiana, there are other impacts they should be concerned about. “We are taking American natural resources, shipping them to the highest bidder . . . and that is a detriment to American manufacturing and American consumers of energy, which is literally all of us,” he says. 

And because LNG is shipped to other countries, it actually means higher energy bills for Americans. By one count from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, gas exports from the U.S. have cost American consumers more than $100 billion over just a 16-month period. That’s because as exports grow, it has shorted our own gas supplies; domestic gas stockpiles have fallen to multiyear lows, sending local gas prices soaring.

When the Freeport LNG terminal in Texas was shut down during Hurricane Beryl in the summer of 2024, Hiatt notes, U.S. gas prices actually fell. “It’s not an American-first policy to try to export natural gas to the highest bidder, on the backs of every American consumer,” he adds.

Hiatt and the Sierra Club also hope to emphasize what an expansion of LNG would mean for our, and our planet’s, health. Currently operating LNG terminals cause an estimated 60 premature deaths, and $957 million in total health costs, per year, according to a 2024 Sierra Club and Greenpeace report. By 2050, jsut those terminals currently operating would lead to 2,020 premature deaths and $28.7 billion in health costs. If all the planned LNG terminals were approved and built, that would rise to 4,470 premature deaths and $62.2 billion in health costs.

With the majority of terminals in the Gulf coast, that means communities of color are also overburdened when it comes to their pollution and health impacts. “Not only are we concerned about the climate, but also the economic and environmental justice impacts of LNG exports,” Sorour says. With the updated LNG terminal review system, local communities have a chance to now share their voice, she adds.

As LNG exports increase, it also impedes the country’s ability to meet its own greenhouse gas and methane targets she notes—and, it jeopardizes the commitments of those countries where that gas is exported to.

Approving more LNG terminals would mean even more emissions locked in—not only during Trump’s term, but for years after. And while much of the support for LNG—and many of Project 2025’s plans—focus on profit margins and shareholder value, Hiatt notes that “there is no economy on a dead planet.”