Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) has been touted as a “cleaner” alternative to coal, but behind all the greenwashing, LNG is responsible for massive environmental devastation. Natural gas extraction wrecks havoc on ecosystems. From threatening whale populations and being responsible for oil spills, massive fish die-off and water supply contamination on Sakhalin Island in the Pacific, to threatening the survival of indigenous communities in Peru, LNG’s dirty little secret is a very real threat. The shipping of LNG adds tremendously to the net emissions, and massive amounts of toxic sediments are stirred up from the floor of lakes and sounds when channels are dredged to make room for ships.
Rising Tide is working to support and provide alliance building opportunities for individuals and groups organizing in opposition to the fossil fuel industry’s development of LNG. Currently LNG development is being met with local, community-based resistance due to the poor safety record, environmental destruction, local-economic impact, and social injustice related to this foreign fossil fuel. Rising Tide aims to contribute to and foster the growth of this resistance as a necessary contribution to confronting the root causes of climate change. We seek to provide a networking opportunity for communities opposing LNG around the world in an effort to strengthen the power of our actions through mutual aid and resource sharing.
While referring to global warming in their advertisements and profiting off of so-called solutions, the fossil fuel industry is actively working to increase our dependency on foreign fossil fuels and build more structure for carbon-emitting fossil fuel extraction. Companies such as Halliburton, Shell and bp are trying to build the infrastructure for LNG to become the new global energy source. LNG is not a bridge to sustainability (as bp claims), but rather just another foreign fossil fuel that would contribute to social and environmental injustice as well as climate chaos.
LNG is NOT Clean Energy
A lot of gas men like to say that LNG is a clean fuel, claiming that LNG is cleaner than coal. While it is true that Natural Gas burns 40% cleaner than coal in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, Natural Gas is different than Liquefied Natural Gas. When dealing with the global issue of climate change, we have to look at Lifecycle Emissions.
While taking into account the emissions released from extraction, the energy consumed during the freezing process (natural gas is frozen to -260 degrees to become a liquid), and the fossil fuels burned in the process of transporting LNG on giant tankers around the world, the greenhouse gas emissions from liquefied natural gas are similar to, if not equivalent to those of coal. The processing cycle of LNG emits 40% more emissions than Natural Gas. Please look into the Heade Climate Report and the Carnegie Melon Report of 2007 for more information.
The New Foreign Fossil Fuel
LNG is different from natural gas, which we currently receive domestically and from Canada, because LNG involves the process of resource extraction from Nigeria, Indonesia, Algeria, Iran, Qatar, Peru and Russia, and shipping the gas in a liquefied state across oceans to the consumption centers of the UK and the US.
Transferring a portion of our dependence on oil to LNG only means expanding the fossil fuel industry’s colonial practices of resource extraction, often in the Global South, to benefit consumers and shareholders in the Global North.
From viruses brought during resource exploration by industry workers in Peru, to LNG plant explosions causing fatalities in Algeria, to noxious mud flows causing the displacement of thousands of people in Indonesia, the negative social and environmental impacts make LNG no better than oil. In fact, most oil companies are exploring LNG development, bringing along with them their horrible human-rights records.
LNG Development Projects
For materials and information about existing and proposed LNG projects, visit Public Citizen. Currently there are over 40 proposals in the United States, and many more in Canada and Mexico, to build import terminals, re-gasification plants and construct thousands of miles of pipelines to create this new fossil fuel infrastructure. This process would involve industrializing coast lines, dredging rivers, and clear-cutting 100 foot right-of-ways for the pipelines, which would negatively impact endangered aquatic and land-based habitats. In addition, the extraction, processing, transport, and burning of LNG release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, greatly contributing to climate change.
Rising Tide North America opposes all Liquefied Natural Gas infrastructural development and seeks to call out these projects as environmental racism and detrimental to our survival. We support a no-compromise direct action approach to stopping LNG development and offer our support to communities around the world opposing LNG.
Current local work:
Cascadia - Rising Tide has been working closely with anti-LNG activists resisting the development of LNG infrastructure in their communities. Focusing on community health and safety, property rights, and Salmon protection, grassroots organizing has brought together hundreds of people to fight the developer’s plans to determine the future of Washingtonians and Oregonians. Rising Tide is contributing climate justice to the dialogue and fostering relationships between the local resistance movements and youth activists.
While on tour this spring we traveled from Southern Oregon to British Columbia sharing information and stories of local resistance in the anti-LNG movement with hundreds of people, directly counter-acting the industry’s attempts to keep the people ignorant about their plans for more foreign fossil fuel dependency. In addition, we have worked to link local struggles against LNG development on the import side, with stories of anti-fossil fuel work at the points of extraction, such as at the Climate Justice Summit, which saw over 100 students from the Northwest converge in Seattle last winter.
We also contributed to making LNG a major focus of the 2007 Environmental Law Conference at the University of Oregon and partnered with local organizers to apply pressure to powerful decision makers by lobbying in D.C. and protesting strategic targets in New York.
This summer the West Coast Convergence for Climate Action will be based adjacent to a proposed LNG site, providing the opportunity to support local activists within a broader framework of climate justice activism and creating a strategic space to confront the root causes of climate change.
Oxnard, CA - Australian resource giant BHP Billiton is trying to get approval for Cabrillo Port, a massive LNG terminal, which would emit 270 tons of air pollutants into a majority Latino community. LNG supertankers would arrive three times a week to offload LNG, which would then travel through a total of 27 miles of pipeline to the existing natural gas infrastructure, on the way disrupting coastal wetlands and habitats.
A coalition of groups is resisting the project, including Pacific Environment, the Environmental Defense Center, Sierra Club, Coastal Advocates, and the No LNG Community Alliance.
The video below details the route of the pipeline on land; a community member has compiled a number of videos, available here.
