Local elected officials in the border city of Brownsville are receiving talking points and media strategy from the company developing Rio Grande LNG—the Central Park-sized liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant project being built in wetlands outside nearby Port Isabel—as the company attempts to stymie a recent court order to halt its project, emails obtained by the Texas Observer show.
The company, the publicly traded Houston firm NextDecade, has helped Brownsville and Cameron County officials draft op-eds, testimonials, and media statements by writing them outright or furnishing talking points or data to use when responding to media requests. NextDecade has also coordinated with the City of Brownsville and Cameron County in their filing of amicus briefs in support of the LNG project.
NextDecade lost its Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) authorization to develop Rio Grande LNG in August, as a result of a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, after nearly a year of construction. The LNG plant is replacing 984 acres of wetlands northeast of Brownsville in the sensitive Laguna Madre area, a crucial habitat for migratory birds and ocelots separated from the Gulf by the Padre barrier island.
If built, the plant would liquefy and export natural gas from a fracking site near Kingsville, arriving by the yet-to-be-constructed, 137-mile Rio Bravo Pipeline. The pipeline, along with the export plant, is within the land claimed by the federally unrecognized tribe, the Carrizo/Comecrudo.
The court decision came in a lawsuit filed by the City of Port Isabel, the Sierra Club, the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, and Vecinos para el Bienestar de la Comunidad Costera, a group of residents from Port Isabel and Laguna Heights, a neighboring colonia.
The federal judges said that FERC had not properly measured Rio Grande LNG’s environmental justice impacts or considered air quality data from a nearby monitor when the regulator reauthorized (after a prior similar court ruling) the plant last year. “We appreciate the significant disruption [this decision] may cause the projects,” the judges wrote. “But that does not outweigh the seriousness of the Commission’s procedural defects.”
FERC needed to give people a chance to comment on environmental justice impacts, consider NextDecade’s proposed carbon capture and sequestration system, and more in what is called a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS), according to the court order. FERC has already started the SEIS and is expected to finish in November 2025.
In response, NextDecade has made a website and deployed a new slogan, “Stand with Rio Grande LNG,” saying the court’s order was “overreaching,” among other disputed claims about how the ruling would impact Cameron County’s economy. The company has filed for a rehearing on the order with the same D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has yet to say whether it will take up the case. If the order stands, it would stop the company from continuing construction at least until the SEIS is completed.
In the meantime, according to Sierra Club attorney Nathan Matthews, the company is technically permitted to continue construction until the appeals process wraps. If the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals doesn’t take up NextDecade’s appeal, the company has stated that it plans to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which could further extend the appeals process and keep the process in limbo and the construction ongoing. Either appellate court could also rule in the company’s favor and clear its path.
NextDecade repeatedly says on its website that the court decision is “unprecedented,” one that threatens the economic sustainability of Cameron County. That’s similar messaging to what local officials have been using when speaking in favor of the project to the media. Emails obtained in a records request by the Observer show that the similarities aren’t coincidental.
In the days after the court’s decision in August, NextDecade executives requested meetings with Cameron County’s highest elected official, County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr., at least two county commissioners, the City of Brownsville’s mayor, John Cowen, and Brownsville city manager, Helen Ramirez.
The meetings consisted of various audio and video calls, a breakfast at a French brunch restaurant, and at least one rendezvous at the Dancy Building, where the offices of the Cameron County commissioners are located, according to emails obtained by the Observer.
Some of those emails show the company asking the City of Brownsville and Cameron County to file an amicus brief on behalf of the Rio Grande LNG project. Another shows Cameron County Commissioner Sofia Benavides sending NextDecade an unnamed person’s résumé with hopes of the company finding a job for the person. “Appreciate anything you can do for him,” Benavides wrote to David Keane, NextDecade’s senior vice president of policy and corporate affairs.
There are also multiple emails from NextDecade to Treviño about a private Jimmy Eat World and DJ Spider concert in Houston hosted by the company. The Observer could not confirm whether Treviño attended the concert.
Most notably, multiple emails outline a communications strategy involving the company and local elected officials in tandem with the “Stand with Rio Grande LNG” website. Treviño, Cowen, and at least three of the county’s commissioners received individual emails from NextDecade asking for “testimonials,” which would be used for the company’s website and social media.
The commissioners obliged, with Cameron County Commissioner Joey Lopez recording a video testimonial for NextDecade that is now posted on the “Stand with Rio Grande LNG” website. Commissioner Benavides, whose district includes the Rio Grande LNG project, sent a short statement for the site, saying, “Anyone who says LNG is bad or dangerous hasn’t done their proper research.”
A Sierra Club and Greenpeace report estimates that air pollution from currently operating LNG facilities nationwide causes $957 million in health costs and 60 premature deaths a year.
Cameron County Commissioner David Garza sent a statement supporting NextDecade, too, one published in the Rio Grande Guardian.
For Cowen, NextDecade specifically asked for an op-ed. “Our PR team advises that having an op-ed from a Brownsville elected official regarding the US Circuit Court issue would be a powerful message,” NextDecade’s Head of Community Relations Andrea Figueroa Benton wrote to Mayor Cowen and City Manager Ramirez, attaching a draft op-ed for them to use.
“We are finalizing drafting of our op ed and will be sending to the newspapers shortly,” Ramirez replied. Benton thanked the city officials, with Cowen replying, “of course – we are glad to support!”
Though the City of Brownsville did not release that draft op-ed to the Observer, some paragraphs in Cowen’s op-ed are pulled verbatim from talking points provided by NextDecade, which appeared in an email, such as the mayor writing that the court’s order would halt a ship channel dredging project, related to the LNG development, “and the substantial benefits to the Rio Grande Valley, Texas and the nation, created by the increased trade at the Port will not materialize.” Other paragraphs seem to paraphrase them.
At least one of the meetings between NextDecade and Brownsville officials was attended by communications consultants hired by NextDecade, the emails show.
NextDecade officials also asked Cowen and Ramirez to talk to a Brownsville Herald reporter, who was covering the court’s order. The company’s communication’s head, Susan Richardson, said in one email that a prior story that the Herald published on the order was “almost all Sierra Club messaging.”
Richardson provided NextDecade executives with talking points to use when speaking with the Herald reporter, which Keane, the NextDecade VP, then forwarded to Cowen and Ramirez. “The Brownsville Herald is writing another article,” Keane wrote. “Would you mind call [sic] the reporter and provide [sic] your comments?”
Ramirez then wrote back saying she talked to the Herald and was “working on the mayor’s comments.” She then asked for data from the company that reflected how many people they were employing, what they were being paid on average, and how many town halls the company has had.
Cowen’s statement in a Brownsville Herald story that was published the same day those emails were sent includes some of the figures provided by NextDecade.
Soon after Rio Grande LNG lost its FERC authorization, County Judge Treviño and NextDecade’s CEO, Matt Schatzman, spoke, according to an August 7 email from Keane to Treviño offering information in the wake of the court ruling.
Two days later, Schatzman sent Treviño a list of talking points.
“I think it would be very helpful if you spoke to local press about this,” Schatzman wrote to Treviño on August 9. “I would also like you to talk to the Governor, and the local congressional leadership. I will be doing the same.” Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office and Democratic Congressman Vicente Gonzalez would later file amicus briefs supporting the project.
In September, NextDecade’s Keane, a registered federal lobbyist, would ask Treviño to pen an op-ed. County staff asked for help writing it. “David [Keane], can you send a draft,” Pete Sepulveda, Cameron County Administrator, wrote.
Keane then sent a draft that Treviño’s op-ed in the Herald would repeat almost word-for-word.
The op-ed also appeared on NextDecade’s “Stand with Rio Grande LNG” site for several days until it was replaced with a video testimonial from Treviño supporting the project.
NextDecade’s Keane told members of the Rio Grande LNG’s Community Advisory Board—composed of local business and civic leaders—that they also needed to talk to the press about Rio Grande LNG.
“We need you to do interviews,” he said during an August 13 meeting with the group, according to a recording of the meeting in emails obtained by the Observer. Later on in the meeting, Keane reiterated: “I think everyone here should be willing to write letters to the editor, do interviews, do social media.”
In 2023, NextDecade drafted letters for several Rio Grande Valley officials to be sent to FERC to pressure the regulator to reauthorize the Rio Grande LNG project after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals had ordered FERC to revise its environmental assessment of the project back in 2021.
For those organizing against the project, the access NextDecade has to local officials isn’t surprising. “We’re so used to them being vendidos,” Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network (SOTXEJN) and a longtime organizer against LNG development in the area, said. (Vendidos is Spanish for “sellout” or “traitor.”)
Hinojosa pointed out that while Brownsville officials, whose city sits some 14 miles from the LNG site, may wholeheartedly support the project, officials in the much closer communities of Port Isabel, Laguna Heights, Laguna Vista, and South Padre Island have generally stood against the development.
The cities of Port Isabel, Laguna Vista, and South Padre Island all passed resolutions opposing the proposed LNG buildout in their backyard in 2015. (At the time, two other LNG projects were being planned near NextDecade’s; one of those has since been cancelled, but another one, much smaller than NextDecade’s, is ongoing.) In 2019, during a tri-city meeting, officials from the same cities reiterated that they opposed LNG facilities in the area. The local school district, Point Isabel ISD, has denied tax abatements to LNG companies including NextDecade three times.
These officials represent those who will be directly impacted by LNG-related pollution, loss of natural habitat, and possible loss of tourism. “The actions that the Laguna Madre communities have taken are much stronger, and they’re more directly impacted,” Hinojosa said.
SOTXEJN co-founder and Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe member Christopher Basaldú said NextDecade is co-opting the language of environmental justice when calling for people to “stand” with the company. “They’re taking those tools, mutilating them, and trying to make them mean exactly the opposite of what they mean,” he said.
Democratic Congress members Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar, whose district includes a western portion of the Valley, have both signed onto an amicus brief asking the D.C. Circuit. Court of Appeals to restore Rio Grande LNG’s FERC authorization. U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn filed a bill in September that would prevent courts from reversing authorization for LNG projects. NextDecade’s PAC has donated to all of these officials at one time or another since 2020, OpenSecrets shows.
No City of Brownsville or Cameron County official mentioned in this story responded to requests for comment by publication time; neither did NextDecade.
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