South Texas Environmental Justice Network is actively monitoring the ongoing attempts by the Port of Brownsville Commissioners to lure additional fossil fuel and petrochemical industries to the Port. Other existing or proposed fossil fuel projects at the Port include Enbridge’s Valley Crossing Pipeline and the planned Jupiter Oil refinery.
Valley Crossing Pipeline
The Valley Crossing natural gas pipeline is owned and operated by the Enbridge corporation is a single 42-inch width pipeline running 140 miles through the following Texas counties: Nueces, Kleberg, Kenedy, Willacy, and Cameron. The pipeline will provide natural gas to the Texas LNG export terminal and then connect to the “Sur de Texas – Tuxpan Gas Pipeline” to supply Mexico (Tamaulipas, Veracruz, as well as Eastern, Central and Western regions) with fracked gas to new power plants.
All fracked pipelines are subject to explosions and leaks. The Valley Crossing 42-inch high-pressure gas line has a blast radius of over half a mile. If the Rio Bravo Pipeline (proposed by Rio Grande LNG) and Valley Crossing Pipelines parallels Highway 48, that means that the public highway itself and all port businesses would be in the impact zone, as would the sensitive natural areas of the Bahia Grande.