Biden’s LNG Export ‘Pause’ Could Derail Southeast Texas Economic Development Plans: Local Officials

House panel hears how the freeze paralyzes 24 projects, including the $13 billion Port Arthur LNG expansion that could create thousands of family-wage jobs.

California-based Sempra Infrastructure's computer rendition of the Port Arthur LNG facility in Southeast Texas. Courtesy of Sempra Infrastructure

The impacts of President Joe Biden’s LNG export permit freeze has reverberated across the nation’s oil/gas industry. But nowhere are its impacts felt more acutely than in southeast Texas, where as many as 24 job-generating petrochemical infrastructure projects, including several already under way, are now in limbo.

The uncertainty fostered by the Biden administration’s Jan. 26 implementation of a “temporary pause” in LNG export permits most notably threatens to derail economic development in Port Arthur and Beaumont, two port cities where billions in planned job-generating investments by private industries have been tailored to benefit local residents and redress long standing community environmental concerns.