Action Alerts

Stop fossil fuel facilities before they’re even built

What's At Stake

The fossil fuel industry has aggressive plans to lock in new oil and gas infrastructure in the form of crude oil and gas export terminals. Off the Texas and Louisiana coasts in the Gulf of Mexico, Earthjustice is challenging the proposed construction of four offshore deepwater ports, which would cause significant greenhouse gas emissions and pose significant health and environmental risks for Gulf Coast communities. We must stop fossil fuel facilities before they’re even built. Tell the Biden administration: Protect our communities and our climate and reject the proposals to build several new offshore deepwater ports throughout the Gulf of Mexico.

Read More

From the Sea Port Oil Terminal near Freeport, Texas, to the proposed Blue Marlin Offshore Port off the coast of Cameron Parish, Louisiana, each of the proposals has the capacity to load and export as much as 2 million barrels of crude oil per day. The projects would lead to increased domestic fossil fuel production and would lock in new transport and processing infrastructure for the sole purpose of growing oil and gas industry profits all at the expense of our climate, Gulf coast ecosystems, and frontline communities that have long-served as sacrifice zones for the fossil fuel industry.

Communities along the Gulf Coast are on the frontlines of the climate disaster. The predominantly Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and low-income communities along the Texas and Louisiana coast already live and work each day near polluting oil and gas pipelines, plants, and terminals. Residents are faced with higher risks of respiratory disease and cancers from industrial air pollutants. These communities are also oftentimes the hardest hit by devastating hurricanes because of the erosion of coastal wetlands due to the effects of oil and gas infrastructure in the region as well as sea level rise caused by a warming planet.

The Biden administration cannot approve these fossil fuel projects while pledging to take bold action to address the climate crisis. Increasing crude oil exports will only lock in decades of pollution that harms our health and our planet. If the Biden administration is serious about environmental and climate justice, then it must use its authority to protect the Gulf Coast from dangerous fossil fuel projects that threaten our environment, as well as global efforts to fight climate change.

An oil drilling ship sits anchored in the Gulf of Mexico. The Inflation Reduction Act reinstates a sale of 80 million offshore acres in the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling.
A drill ship anchored in the Gulf of Mexico, off the Louisiana coast in 2021. (Brad Zweerink / Earthjustice)

Delivery to EPA Secretary Michael Regan, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and WH National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi

Important Notice

Your message is delivered to a public agency, and all information submitted may be placed in the public record. Do not submit confidential information.

By taking action, you will receive emails from Earthjustice. Change your mailing preferences or opt-out at any time. Learn more in our Privacy Policy. This Earthjustice action is hosted on EveryAction. Learn about EveryAction’s Privacy Policy.

Why is a phone number or prefix required on some action forms?

Trouble Viewing This Action?

If the action form is not loading above, please add earthjustice.org as a trusted website in your ad blocker or pause any ad blockers, and refresh this webpage. (Details.) If the action form still does not display, please report the problem to us at action@earthjustice.org. Thank you!

Your Actions Matter

Your messages make a difference, even if we have leaders who don't want to listen. Here's why.

You level the playing field.

Elected officials pay attention when they see that we are paying attention. Read more.

They may be hearing from industry lobbyists left and right, but hearing the stories of their constituents — that’s your power.

Our legislators serve at the pleasure of the people who gave them their job — you.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. When you contact your elected official, you’re putting a face and a name on an issue.

Whether or not you voted for them, they work for you, for the duration of their term.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. (Find your local, state, and federal elected officials.)

Your action is with us in court.

If a federal agency finalizes a harmful action, the record of public comments provides a basis for bringing them into court. Read more.

Throughout each of the public comment periods we alert you to, Earthjustice’s attorneys are researching and writing in-depth, technical comments to submit — detailing how the regulation could and should be stronger to protect the environment, our communities, and our planet.

We need you to join us — your specific experiences, knowledge, and voice are crucial to add to the Administrative Record through the comment periods.

Lawsuits we file that challenge weak or harmful federal regulations rely on what was submitted during the comment period. The court can only look at documents that are in the Administrative Record — including the public comments — to decide if the agency did something improper.

Your actions aid our litigation. Taking action and submitting comments during a comment period is substantively important.

It’s the law.

Federal agencies must pause what they’re doing and ask for — and consider — your comment. Read more.

Many of us may have never heard of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), but laws like these require our government to ask the public to weigh in before agencies adopt or change regulations.

Regulations essentially describe how federal agencies will carry out laws — including decisions that could undermine science, or weaken safeguards on public health.

Public comments are collected at various points throughout the federal government’s rulemaking process, including when a regulation is proposed and finalized. (Learn about the rulemaking process.) These comments become part of the official, legal public record — the “Administrative Record.”

When the public responds with a huge outpouring of support for environmental protections, these individual messages collectively undercut politicians' attempts to claim otherwise.

What this means is each of us can take a role in shaping the rules our government creates — and ensuring those rules are fair and effective.