New Fortress Energy’s plans to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) south from Wyalusing, Pa., through the Philadelphia region and across the Delaware River to a proposed export facility in Gibbstown, NJ, have been sidelined by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which in April vetoed the extension of a permit for transporting that LNG by rail. The company that sought that permit extension was Energy Transport Solutions.
Environmental advocates, including Sierra Club chapters in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, have fought the extension since the original permit was approved in 2019. It is unclear what New Fortress Energy’s next step will be. It remains a possibility that the company will ship its fracked gas from Wyalusing by truck, which is also highly dangerous to communities along the route.
However, in 2022, a New Fortress Energy subsidiary agreed to stop construction of an $800 million LNG liquefaction plant in Bradford County, Pa., which would have supplied the LNG for transport to Gibbstown. It was hoped that termination of the Bradford County project would also end downstream development activity related to the Gibbstown LNG port, where New Fortress Energy had proposed to load LNG onto ships for overseas delivery.
Besides the dangers of shipping large quantities of LNG by rail or truck through densely populated communities, the expanded production and use of LNG globally would represent a vast setback to efforts to mitigate climate change, as LNG is a potent climate destabilizer.