In the 1940s, Novelist John Steinbeck described the Gulf of California as “ferocious with life.” World-famous oceanographer Jacques Cousteau reportedly dubbed the gulf the “the world’s aquarium.” They were right. Known locally as the Sea of Cortez, the gulf’s crystal blue waters, which stretch about 700 miles between mainland Mexico and the Baja California peninsula, showcase rich ecosystems of coral reefs, seagrass beds, and mangrove estuaries. Together, they provide habitat to more than 800 types of fish and nearly 40 percent of marine mammal species. Majestic fin, humpback, and blue whales, playful sea lions, enormous pods of dolphins, and the critically endangered vaquita, the world’s smallest porpoise, all live, feed, and nurse their young here. Sadly, overfishing has plagued this ocean paradise for decades, and now the fossil fuel industry aims to further sully this seascape by building three liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals along its eastern coastline.
“They basically want to use the Gulf of California’s coast as a gas station, piping gas from Texas to Asia,” says Sujatha Bergen, the director of global energy transition within NRDC’s International program.
And the LNG industry has a ready political ally in President Trump. On his first day in office, Trump lifted the Biden administration’s freeze on LNG export permits and directed the U.S. Department of Energy to restart permit reviews “as expeditiously as possible.” Less than a month later, he gave conditional approval to Commonwealth LNG, an enormous export plant proposed for Louisiana that still needs adequate evaluation from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
The three proposed terminals in the Gulf of California would obtain LNG from the Permian Basin, a hotbed of fossil fuel activity that spans an area across southeastern New Mexico and western Texas. The plan is for the industry to send its large surplus of natural gas across the southern border via pipeline to the terminals. From there, processors would cool it into a liquid state (a very energy-intensive undertaking) before shippers would export it across the Pacific Ocean. (An alternative would be to ship the LNG from existing terminals on the Louisiana coast and then, eventually, through the Panama Canal.)
If completed, the projects—Saguaro Energía, AMIGO LNG, and Vista Pacifico LNG—would lock in decades more of fossil fuel extraction and, of course, thwart climate goals to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The LNG terminals would also take a devastating toll on the Gulf of California’s delicate marine ecosystems.
