What Happened When an LNG Giant Came to Town
Key takeaways
- Rust red and corrugated, the 31.5-foot-high solid steel fence circumscribes a natural gas export terminal that sprawls across 1,150 acres where grasslands stood just a year ago.
- Before the storms, Cameron was home to some 2,000 people.
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Rust red and corrugated, the 31.5-foot-high solid steel fence circumscribes a natural gas export terminal that sprawls across 1,150 acres where grasslands stood just a year ago. The wall is meant to hold back the type of storm surges that pushed through here when Hurricane Rita hit in 2005, followed by Ike in 2008 and Laura and Delta in 2020.
Before the storms, Cameron was home to some 2,000 people. Today, fewer than 200 remain. In their place, a company called Venture Global is building a complex of liquefied natural gas terminals that will be one of the largest in the country. The industrial operations cluster together gas-fired turbines and compressors to super-cool methane gas until it becomes a liquid, which is then pumped into tankers and shipped across the ocean.