In the last six years, officials in Texas and Louisiana issued permits allowing 74 petrochemical, oil, and gas projects to pump as much climate-warming pollution into the atmosphere as running 29 coal-fired power plants around the clock, according to numbers released September 26 by the nonprofit watchdog Environmental Integrity Project.

And construction appears to be speeding up, with over 40 percent of those projects permitted between 2016 and mid-2018. The 31 most recent projects combined will add 50 million tons of greenhouse gases — equal to 11 new coal-fired power plants — to the world’s atmosphere in a year, the watchdog adds.

Environmentalists pointed to the risks that climate change poses to Gulf Coast states, where these projects are being built, and noted that the greenhouse effect has already led to sea level rise and a higher risk of extreme storms.

“Louisiana is already sinking into the Gulf of Mexico, and yet our state government is permitting more of the emissions that cause flooding and storms,” Anne Rolfes, Founding Director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, said in a statement accompanying the numbers. “It’s mind boggling.”

The most recent projects tallied by the group include seven Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plants or terminals, 15 chemical and plastic resin plants, five petroleum refineries, and two natural gas processing plants, as well as a fertilizer manufacturer and hydrogen plant, all in Texas and Louisiana.

Looking North

The count does not include plants outside the Gulf Coast, like the Marcellus shale region of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, where a glut of natural gas liquids (NGLs) like ethane, a petrochemical feedstock produced by many shale wells, is attracting attention from plastics and chemical manufacturers.

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