Environmental justice advocates and communities who (will) bear the brunt of the resulting risk are raising the alarm over a Biden administration support for carbon capture and sequestration, which they see as merely a ploy to give fossil fuel industries a license to continue polluting their communities and heating the climate. “In the real world, this is an experiment,” Beverly Wright, head of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and member of the White House EJ Advisory Council, told the Washington Post. “And this experiment is going to be conducted on the same communities that have suffered from the oil and gas industry.”
These concerns are most acute in the Gulf Coast and in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” where the petrochemical industry has heavily polluted Black communities — and where the methane gas industry is looking to export even more gas overseas with developers set to approve a record amount of new LNG capacity. In Port St. Joe, Florida, residents worry about their safety with Miami-based LNG company Nopetro trying to build a new LNG facility there.
“[LNG] is inherently unstable and dangerous, and it is polluted,” PublicCitizen Director of Energy Program Tyson Slocum told MyPanhandle. “One year ago this month in Freeport, Texas, [Freeport LNG] suffered a catastrophic failure and suffered a huge explosion that resulted in a fireball 300 feet high,” Slocum added. “Earlier this month in Cameron Louisiana, a large LNG tank that was feeding a natural gas power plant suffered a catastrophic failure and forced the evacuation of all residents within a mile of that facility.” So “we’re not opposing progress,” local resident Chester Davis said. “We’re not opposing prosperity for the community, but we are opposing anything that will bring danger to that community.” (CCS: Washington Post $; Record LNG approvals: Reuters; Port St. Joe: MyPanhandle)