Last Monday, April 8, Washington Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Republican South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan—two of the oil and gas industry’s biggest cronies—traveled to my home of Port Arthur, Texas, to push for the expansion of liquefied natural gas export facility buildouts in my community.
Their stunt comes as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) prepares to tie Ukraine aid to a reversal of President Joe Biden’s pause on the buildout of LNG facilities—until it’s determined whether or not they are truly in the best interest of communities like mine.
My only question is: Who are you going to believe?
Instead of believing the lies of executives with no skin in the game and no connection to the neighborhoods ravaged by climate change, we need to believe in ourselves—in our ability to organize and stand up for the health and prosperity of our communities.
For over 60 years, I’ve called Port Arthur my home. I lived on the “fence line”—the dividing line between residential neighborhoods and LNG facilities—most of my life. I’m a retired, second-generation refinery worker and union member; a former three-term city council member and mayor pro-tem, who has witnessed Big Oil operate with impunity for a long time.
I know oil executives’ push to build out these toxic LNG facilities is not to strengthen the local economy—as they will often argue. Rather, building harmful refineries in “sacrifice zones” like my neighborhood are what they deem “the path of least resistance” toward notching bigger corporate profits at a time when most Americans are struggling to make ends meet.
Reps. Rodgers and Duncan on the other hand—like many of the men in suits who pop up telling us what our community needs—are puppets of Big Oil and Gas, having received at least $1,711,300 in campaign contributions from the industry while in office. So I’ll ask once more: When it comes to the voices most concerned with the health and financial well-being of American citizens living in the methane haze of these plants, who are you going to believe?
What makes this incursion into our communities all the more brazen is that it comes while Americans, particularly in the Gulf South, are reeling from near-constant extreme weather events caused by fossil fuel-driven climate change. Price gouging corporations blame these catastrophes on American consumers, while gas prices skyrocket and families struggle to pay for escalating home insurance premiums.
Port Arthur has had three operating refineries, and numerous other petrochemical facilities for many years. Yet, Port Arthur has a poverty rate of 28%, an unemployment rate that’s almost three times the national average at 10.4%, and some of the lowest home values in Texas. If these facilities were meant to benefit ordinary citizens, wouldn’t we have felt it by now?
Furthermore, Port Arthur has been a prime example of the human and economic toll of fossil fuel-driven climate change—having endured Hurricane Rita in 2005, Ike in 2008, and Harvey in 2017. Because of the oil and gas industry’s turning a blind eye to the climate crisis, Port Arthur residents live in constant fear of life changing disasters. I’m afraid to even say the word “hurricane,” out of fear I’ll conjure one up. Again I ask: Who are you going to believe?
If you think that this is the lone horror story of just one community in America, I beg you to reconsider. The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects LNG export capacity to double by 2027. Hitting that target means building more facilities. Do you think that expansion will happen in Beverly Hills, River Oaks, or the other affluent neighborhoods where these executives live? Or near the comfortable homes where Reps. McMorris Rodgers and Duncan reside? It seems far more likely they will continue to demand Black and Hispanic communities across the country be sacrificed, to hold their breath in billowing toxic clouds.
Instead of believing the lies of executives with no skin in the game and no connection to the neighborhoods ravaged by climate change, we need to believe in ourselves—in our ability to organize and stand up for the health and prosperity of our communities. We, the folks who have endured cancer diagnoses and the unnecessary loss of family, friends, and neighbors, must stand firm in the face of corporate greed and Big Oil deception.
The fight we are waging in Port Arthur is more than the isolated tale of a small town; it’s a playbook for working class communities actively resisting the “profits over people” ethos destroying American communities. Unfortunately for Reps. McMorris Rodgers and Duncan, you can’t be a mouthpiece for citizens AND Big Oil at the same time.
