Residents resist three natural gas terminals in tourist area of South Texas

Corrections & clarifications: An earlier version of this story misidentified the year a pipeline explosion occurred in New Mexico. It occurred in 2000. 

PORT ISABEL, Texas – The view from the back porch of George and Flora Gunderson’s home in this idyllic hamlet on the southernmost tip of Texas consists mainly of ospreys, coyotes, acres of open wetland and the occasional cargo ship plying to and from the nearby Port of Brownsville.

Soon, that view may also include three liquefied natural gas, or LNG, export terminals – something the Gundersons didn’t bargain for when they retired here 10 years ago from Texas City.

“We thought we had found paradise and we would be here the rest of our lives,” Flora Gunderson, 67, said, “until the LNG plants decided to come here.”

The proposed projects are slated to be built on open land surrounding the Port of Brownsville and could bring millions of dollars and high-paying jobs to the region. The terminals, which will export millions of cubic feet of natural gas each day to countries around the world, are part of one of the fastest-growing segments of Texas’ energy sector.

But some residents and environmentalists oppose the projects, saying the threat of toxins released into the air and the potential for explosions leave residents at risk and could disrupt the beachcomber allure of Port Isabel and nearby South Padre Island.

“Our only income here is tourism,” said Kerry Schwartz, president of the South Padre Island Business Owners Association and a vocal opponent to the terminals. “We don’t want to see a bunch of industrial plants come here and ruin that.”

Another concern: the SpaceX South Texas Launch Site, billionaire Elon Musk’s initiative to launch rockets into space, will be built nearby. The company made headlines earlier this month when one of its rockets exploded while on a launch pad in Florida.

”They want to put these ticking time bombs here next to these rockets," Schwartz said. "It's a terrible idea.”

The boom in natural gas extraction from shale formations like Texas's Eagle Ford and the Permian Basin, the decline in U.S. prices and the eager markets for the gas in Europe and Asia have fueled the current rush to export the gas, according to experts. Earlier this month, oil exploration company Apache discovered another 75 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in West Texas, one of the largest discoveries in years.

There are currently just two LNG export terminals in the USA – one in Alaska and Louisiana. Six others are under construction and another four that are approved and permitted, but not yet under construction, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

The gas travels to the export terminals via pipeline and is cryogenically cooled to -260 degrees F to make it a condensed liquid, before it’s loaded on mammoth tankers and shipped to other ports. The Port of Brownsville is an ideal location because of its deep channels and proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, said Vivek Chandra, chief executive of Texas LNG, one of the entities proposing an export terminal here. Once the gas is cooled, it’s non-flammable and poses little environmental or safety risk, Chandra said.

The Port of Brownsville would lease land to the companies, which would build and operate the terminals. FERC, which regulates such terminals, is reviewing all three projects.

The Texas LNG project alone would bring 600 temporary construction jobs and 80 permanent positions averaging $70,000 a year in salaries, Chandra said.

“LNG is one of the cleanest fuels we can ever handle,” he said. “The gas we take, it’s already clean enough to put into your own home.”

LNG export terminals, in fact, have some of the cleanest safety and environmental track records of the oil and gas sector, said Thomas Tunstall, senior research director at the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Institute for Economic Development, an expert on the Eagle Ford Shale who has studied the export terminals.

The terminals don’t burn off gas the way wellheads do or deal with volatile materials once the gas is converted to liquid, he said. “Once it’s refrigerated, the possibility of it exploding is virtually non-existent,” Tunstall said.

But residents say they're mostly concerned with the connection from the pipeline to the facility and are rattled by reports of natural gas pipeline explosions, such as the pipeline explosion that killed 12 people, including several children, in 2000 as they camped near the Pecos River in New Mexico, or the gas line explosion last year that killed three workers and badly injured two others in Terrebonne Parish, La.

Last week, the Point Isabel Independent School District took the unusual step of rejecting a tax abatement proposal from one of the terminal projects, Rio Grande LNG. The tax deal would have brought $1.5 million a year for the next 10 years in added revenue to the school district. Board members rejected the proposal 5-2.

“It all boils down to keeping our area safe and keeping it beautiful,” board president Cecilia Castillo said. “Without that, we wouldn’t have anything.”

For the Gundersons, opposition to the terminals is more personal. In 2005, George Gunderson was working as a warehouse manager for the BP Texas City Refinery when a massive explosion rocked the facility, killing 15 workers and injuring 170 others. He escaped with minor injuries but the couple vowed to move as far away as possible from any refineries.

They chose Port Isabel for its proximity to the water and its lack of oil and gas facilities.

"We wanted to be somewhere where that would never happen again," Flora Gunderson said. "That was the whole premise."

She added: "They say they're safe. But I'm here to tell you, they're not safe."