The Trump administration said Tuesday it is renewing efforts to replace 45-year-old safety rules for the coastal terminals that chill natural gas into a cryogenic liquid and load it onto ships for export.
The rewrite will be focused on deregulation and examine “cost savings for the industry,” according to a draft notice and a news release from the Department of Transportation.
“Under this administration, America is building again,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement. DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, he said, “is laying the groundwork to revamp decades-old regulations and slash red tape to increase LNG exports, generate good-paying jobs, and allow the U.S. to safely send more of its natural resources around the world.”
The LNG announcement comes as the Trump administration seeks to accelerate what is already a dramatic surge in exports of liquefied natural gas from U.S. terminals along the Gulf Coast. That surge is being met with growing opposition to exports from environmental groups. The rulemaking process could spur a heated debate about safety, U.S. energy security, energy costs and the role of natural gas in fueling the world.
The country’s main pipeline safety advocacy group criticized focus on deregulation, saying the Trump administration approach leaves numerous gaps in safety. The Pipeline Safety Trust said PHMSA should focus on protecting communities near the massive terminals, mostly along the Gulf Coast.
“While it’s wonderful to see PHMSA finally addressing the long-outdated LNG safety regulations, it’s hard to reconcile this effort with PHMSA’s references to this being deregulatory,” Bill Caram, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, said in a news release.
The U.S LNG industry did not voice objections about the renewed regulatory effort Tuesday. Its main trade group, the Center for LNG, has long said the rules are outdated, and Executive Director Charlie Riedl cheered Tuesday’s announcement.
“This effort represents a meaningful opportunity to update prescriptive regulations with a performance-based, risk-informed approach that improves safety outcomes while supporting continued U.S. LNG leadership on the global stage,” he said in an emailed statement, adding that the industry wants to ensure the rule is “effective, science-driven, and reflective of industry best practices.”
PHMSA’s planned overhaul also arrives as the LNG industry continues to try to ramp up U.S. export capacity with complex industrial projects.
On Monday, Australia-based Woodside Energy announced a final investment decision on three production lines of its planned Louisiana LNG export project, which includes a pipeline. On Tuesday, three workers died, and two were injured in a scaffolding incident at an LNG terminal construction site near Port Arthur, Texas.
The worker deaths occurred about 2 a.m. local time Tuesday at the site where Sempra Infrastructure’s Port Arthur LNG terminal is being built. OSHA said it is investigating. Bechtel, the construction contractor, said all work at the site was stopped following the incident.
Evolving industry
DOT said Tuesday that PHMSA will also be revising regulations that cover when pipelines carrying crude oil and other hazardous liquids must be repaired, when pipeline companies must upgrade pipes in response to population growth and the rules about transportation of petroleum-based fuels.
Tuesday’s announcement is technically a step backward in the process for LNG rules. PHMSA has for years been working on a new draft of the regulations called a “notice of proposed rulemaking.”
But DOT is shifting to an information-gathering stage called an “advance notice of proposed rulemaking” to seek comment. When that is complete, the agency will start work on its proposed rulemaking.
The effort to update the regulations stalled in Trump’s first term and made little progress during the Biden administration as emissions and other efforts took priority.
The current LNG export industry bears little resemblance to what it looked like in 1980, when the current rule was published.
That was the last full year of the Carter administration, and LNG was kept as backup fuel for gas-fired power plants when demand peaked. In the early 2000s, fear of gas shortages led to construction of terminals to potentially import natural gas liquefied abroad. But then the market changed because of a surge of U.S. gas production from shale formations using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
Today, massive coastal terminals coasts handle billions of cubic feet of gas piped in every day from U.S. production fields. They shrink it six-hundredfold by supercooling it to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit and ship it overseas on vessels roughly the size of aircraft carriers.
That brings a hazard that wasn’t present at import terminals. Heavier hydrocarbons — such as ethane and propane — are used as refrigerants to shrink the gas. Unlike methane, these gases are heavier than air and can create a vaporous, flammable fog if they leak.
The industry has mushroomed since 2015, when there were essentially no LNG exports from the Lower 48 states. Today, eight terminals ship an average of 12 billion cubic feet every day overseas.
Five more are under construction, and another dozen or so are in various stages of permitting. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says LNG exports could be double 2024 levels by around the end of Trump’s current four-year term.
PHMSA been working to update the safety rules for more than eight years, dating to the final years of the Obama administration, shortly before the industry revved up. Congress has twice told the agency to revise the regulations. But PHMSA hasn’t even published a draft.
In his first term, Trump issued an executive order in 2019 commanding PHMSA to finalize a rule by May 2020. PHMSA sent a draft to the White House, but it was withdrawn in March 2020.
Work resumed under Biden but didn’t get to the draft stage as it competed with other priorities, including cracking down on methane emissions from pipelines and updating rules for carbon dioxide pipelines. PHMSA’s final regulatory update of the Biden administration predicted publication of a draft in February 2026.
Even after a draft is published, PHMSA rules can take years to finalize. In the meantime, new facilities are built to the existing 45-year-old standards. They could be subject to new operations or maintenance standards.
Natural gas exports have been a key part of Trump’s quest for “energy dominance.” Then-President Joe Biden said early last year that his administration would “pause” the issuance of some export permits, angering the gas industry and drawing a court intervention. Trump wiped out the pause on Inauguration Day in one of his executive orders.
Supporters say LNG exports create jobs, improve the country’s balance of trade and reduce greenhouse gas emissions abroad by replacing coal with natural gas.
But some people who live near the mammoth facilities along the coasts question their safety. An explosion at Freeport LNG’s terminal south of Houston in June 2023, caused no serious injuries. But it rattled local residents and shut down operations for months.
Louisiana project
Environmental groups and others are increasingly fighting natural gas exports from the United States, pointing to international calls from scientists that fossil fuel use must rapidly decline if the world is to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. Consumer advocates say exporting so much gas will drive up prices for people and businesses in the United States.
But companies continue to push ahead with projects.
Woodside’s planned project in Louisiana is a $17.5 billion investment, and the company said it is planning to see “first LNG” in 2029.
Making a final investment decision is a key decision point for project developers. The project — located in Louisiana’s Calcasieu Parish — is designed to produce 16.5 million metric tons of LNG per year from the three initial units, or trains.
In a statement, Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill said the Louisiana LNG project will position Woodside as a “global LNG powerhouse.”
“Louisiana LNG has further potential for growth and value creation” beyond the first three trains, O’Neill said on a company webcast, “with expansion capacity for two additional LNG trains and total permitted capacity of 27.6 million [metric] tons per annum. It is a world-class project that is a compelling and de-risked investment.”
A final investment decision on the additional two trains “will be subject to a future announcement,” said Marja Crockett, corporate affairs manager at Woodside, in an email Tuesday. Construction at the Louisiana LNG project is underway, Crockett said.
O’Neill also said the Louisiana LNG project — which has a lifespan of more than 40 years — faces “limited tariff exposure due to the approach we’ve applied in the U.S.” and elsewhere to source a “high volume” of local content.
Roughly 25 percent of the project’s capital expenditures is for equipment and materials and around half of that is “expected to be sourced” from the United States, she said.
“The significant involvement of U.S.-based contractors, labor and services ensures we are supporting both the Louisiana and national economies,” O’Neill also said.
On a call with reporters Tuesday, Anne Rolfes, director of the accountability group Louisiana Bucket Brigade, said there are “real questions about how much product the world can handle.”
Rolfes called LNG a “volatile” fuel, adding that it “doesn’t make sense” to continue with an ongoing build-out of LNG export terminals.
While Shell in February said global demand for LNG could increase by about 60 percent by 2040, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis — which casts a critical eye on LNG and coal projects — said it expects LNG liquefaction capacity coming online through 2028 to exceed demand.
U.S. exports of LNG are forecast to grow by more than 6 percent from 2025 to 2026, according to a recent report from EIA, the Department of Energy’s statistical arm.
