When Louisiana launched the country’s liquefied natural gas export boom in 2016, LNG was touted as a cleaner, climate-friendly alternative to coal and oil.

But the state’s first LNG terminal, Sabine Pass LNG, quickly became one of Louisiana’s largest sources of climate-warming pollution, releasing more greenhouse gases than the state’s biggest oil refineries.

An even larger source is on the way. A sprawling LNG facility under construction near Lake Charles, about 40 miles east of the Sabine Pass terminal, is projected to produce substantially more emissions — eclipsing every LNG export terminal built in the United States so far and exceeding the dozens of LNG projects proposed for the next decade, according to a Verite News analysis of state and federal records.

“Wow, that’s really distressing,” said Anne Rolfes, executive director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, an environmental group, in response to the findings. Louisiana faces several climate threats exacerbated by greenhouse gas emissions, including rising sea levels and more intense hurricanes. “As Louisiana becomes more vulnerable, we’re just adding to that vulnerability by producing more greenhouse gases,” Rolfes said. “That’s insanity.”

The terminal, called Louisiana LNG, is owned by Woodside Energy, Australia’s biggest oil and gas producer. Construction costs for the terminal are expected to reach nearly $18 billion, which would place the project among the largest foreign investments in Louisiana’s history, according to the state’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry. At the project’s groundbreaking ceremony in September, Landry called the occasion “a great day for Louisiana and an unbelievable day for America.”

The project is expected to support thousands of temporary construction jobs and hundreds of jobs within the completed terminal, while also boosting local tax revenue, according to Louisiana’s economic development agency.

Woodside is betting heavily on LNG, a fuel produced by supercooling natural gas into a liquid that’s much easier to store and ship. The company acquired the 1,000-acre site near Lake Charles in 2024 from Houston-based Tellurian, a natural gas company which had begun developing the facility under the name Driftwood LNG.

Set to open in 2029, Louisiana LNG is expected to generate more than 9.5 million tons of greenhouse gases annually, according to permitting documents filed with Louisiana regulators. The terminal’s emissions from the liquefaction process and other energy-intensive operations would be much higher than the nearly 7 million tons of greenhouse gases the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says are emitted by the Sabine Pass terminal. They would also exceed the emissions of the seven other terminals that’ve been built across the country over the past 10 years.

Of the 23 proposed terminals that reported potential greenhouse gas emissions to regulators, the Woodside facility would release far more than any other. The closest is a terminal planned for Alaska in 2030, with estimated annual emissions of nearly 8.6 million tons.

These LNG terminals produce the most greenhouse gas emissions

Tons of CO2 equivalent per year, operating and proposed liquefied natural gas export projects

Compared with all of Louisiana’s refineries, chemical plants, and other industrial facilities, the Woodside terminal’s estimated emissions would rank just below the state’s largest greenhouse gas source, the CF Industries chemical complex in Donaldsonville. That complex, the world’s largest producer of ammonia, released about 10.4 million tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in 2023, the latest year in the EPA’s national greenhouse gas emissions inventory. The Sabine Pass terminal would rank third, followed by Exxon Mobil’s refinery in Baton Rouge, according to EPA records.

Woodside’s priority “is to avoid and reduce emissions,” a company spokesperson said in an email. “All Woodside-operated assets and projects must draw up decarbonization plans to identify the technical opportunities to reduce emissions at the facility, so that the opportunities can be further assessed for engineering and commercial viability.” Its company-wide climate strategy aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. In recent years, the company has met incremental climate goals by improving facility designs to reduce methane leakage and other emissions, and by buying carbon credits, including investments in forest restoration to offset the company’s environmental impacts, according to company reports.

Woodside was a pioneer in liquefied natural gas, developing one of the world’s first LNG export terminals in 1989. Like many LNG companies, it promotes the product as better for the planet than other fossil fuels.

“Coal remains the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel and the largest contributor to anthropogenic CO2 emissions,” Woodside’s 2025 Climate and Sustainability Summary said. “By comparison, power generated from natural gas typically emits around half the lifecycle emissions as power generated from coal.”

A decade ago, the opening of Sabine Pass LNG came with a similar pitch. The terminal’s owner, Cheniere Energy, marketed natural gas as a way for companies and countries to meet climate targets.

“Natural gas is becoming the fossil fuel of choice to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions while still being a reliable and economic supply source,” Anatol Feygin, a Cheniere executive, told investors in 2016. “Cheniere’s U.S. LNG … will help markets shift to cleaner-burning natural gas to reach their environmental goals.”

Since then, U.S exports of LNG have surged from less than 1 billion cubic feet per day to about 15 billion, making the country the world’s largest supplier of liquefied natural gas.

Despite assurances that natural gas would bring environmental benefits, many experts who study greenhouse gas emissions say the LNG boom will likely worsen global warming. In 2023, 170 scientists signed a letter urging President Joe Biden to halt the expansion of LNG terminals, warning that the growing use of liquefied natural gas will “put us on a continued path toward escalating climate chaos.”

LNG is at least 33 percent worse for the climate than coal when energy use from processing and shipping is taken into account, according to a Cornell University study. Methane and carbon dioxide released during LNG’s extraction, supercooling, transportation, and storage account for about half of its total greenhouse gas footprint, the study’s authors said.

Biden paused the permitting of new LNG terminals in early 2024, but President Donald Trump reversed course a year later. Part of Trump’s push to “unleash American energy dominance,” the resumption of permitting broke open a logjam of LNG projects.

“There are so many liquefied natural gas facilities in the pipeline — pun intended,” said Alexandra Shaykevich, a research manager with the Environmental Integrity Project. “They’re proposed all over the United States, but the bulk of the build-out is in Louisiana and Texas.”

At least 32 LNG export projects are under construction or proposed in the United States. Most are planned for the Gulf Coast, including 14 in Louisiana. The proposed facilities would join four already operating in Louisiana: Sabine Pass, Cameron LNG and Calcasieu Pass LNG in Cameron Parish, and the newest, Plaquemines LNG in Port Sulphur, which began shipping liquefied gas in late 2024.

Trump has rolled back several regulatory barriers that had slowed the development of LNG infrastructure. Because the industry depends on exports and interstate pipelines, it would normally face a complex, multi-agency web of trade, environmental, and safety regulations. “All that’s been fast-tracked, and we’re seeing an emboldening of the industry,” Shaykevich said.

The Russia-Ukraine war has also helped drive recent growth. Since Russia invaded its neighbor in 2022, pipeline gas supplies to Europe have plummeted. Liquefied natural gas from the U.S. has filled more than 40 percent of the gap, according to the International Energy Agency.

Almost all of the LNG streaming into Germany comes from the U.S., said Markus Hatzelmann, deputy consul general at the German consulate in Houston. “That just shows you the role LNG from the Gulf Coast plays in strengthening Germany’s security as well as stabilizing European supplies,” he said at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Woodside terminal last year.

Building new LNG import terminals also will help Germany reach its climate goals, which include the phaseout of coal by 2038. Despite growing concerns about LNG’s climate impacts, Germany sees the fuel playing “a key role in this transition,” Hatzelmann said.

Rolfes, of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, dismisses such talk as greenwashing a “dirty fuel.” She said rising greenhouse gas emissions won’t just harm the planet but could also have devastating consequences for southwest Louisiana, where Woodside and other LNG companies operate.

“Look at what hurricanes do to us,” Rolfes said, pointing to the more than $14 billion in damage Hurricane Laura caused in 2020. “Look at Laura and what it did to Lake Charles. It was one step from being wiped off the map. Do you want to continue to live in Louisiana? Then you should be concerned about greenhouse gas emissions from all these terminals.”