Texas activists arrested in D.C. during protest against offshore oil export facility

Four climate activists from Texas and Louisiana were arrested Wednesday morning in Washington, D.C., after staging a sit-in at the Department of Transportation, which could rule as soon as next week on one of four proposed offshore oil terminals in the Gulf of Mexico.

The activists say the terminals, designed to expand the nation’s oil export capacity by 6.5 million barrels a day, clash head on with the Biden administration’s aggressive climate goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and would enable decades of growth in U.S. fossil fuel production.

“We’re asking President Biden and [Transportation Secretary] Pete Buttigieg to step up and be climate leaders and not approve this oil export project,” said Melanie Oldham, founder of Citizens for Clean Air & Clean Water of Freeport and Brazoria County, who traveled from Texas for the sit-in but was not among those arrested. “We hope they practice what they preach, what they told us in their campaigns.”

Offshore terminals, 30 miles into the Gulf, would allow the world’s largest tankers to draw oil directly from Texas, where oil exports have surged since Congress lifted an export ban in 2015. Currently, a lack of deepwater access is hampering export growth as output from Texas’ Permian Basin sets records and prices soar, requiring smaller ships to tediously ferry oil from Texas’ coastal depots to larger ships waiting miles offshore.

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/11/16/texas-protest-offshore-oil-export-epa/