LOS ARECIFES, Mexico (AP) — The sun has set and the clouds are washed in purple as Mauricio Contreras and his daughter Eunice go fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. Eunice casts heavy nets for snapper, pollock or cabrilla while her father steers their small boat.
Contreras, an anchor dangling from a silver chain on his deeply tanned skin, has been doing it for more than 40 years. But he worries that the family’s main source of income is now at risk from an underwater pipeline completed last year to import natural gas from the United States.
“When they started laying it, it affected us because the boats were dropping explosives and you could hear it here, right on shore,” Contreras recalls. Now that it’s in operation, he’s worried about leaks: “It’s a constant threat that will always be there, and it’s a risk to the entire fishing industry.”
Known as the Southeast Gateway, the pipeline was built by Canadian company TC Energy in partnership with Mexico’s state-owned power company CFE. It adds 700 kilometers (435 mi) to a line that now stretches from southern Texas to the state of Tabasco, where it supplies electricity for a major oil refinery. But its main goal is to someday deliver gas to the Yucatan Peninsula after another pipeline extension is completed.
The Southeast Gateway is part of a wave of projects that will allow Mexico, already the world’s largest buyer of U.S. gas, to bring in more for its own use and re-export to Asia and Europe. But it faces growing resistance from communities and environmental groups that say the strategy will increase the use of polluting fossil fuels, increase dependence on the U.S. and put Mexico’s climate commitments at risk.
Resistance in Veracruz
More than 40,000 people across Veracruz make their living from the sea, including Contreras, who lives in a community where fishing is the only occupation. He joined residents of 15 coastal communities last year in a lawsuit over the pipeline that was dismissed, but is under appeal.
They charge that their communities, mostly the Nahua and Nuntaziyi’ indigenous peoples, were not consulted before construction began as required by the Mexican constitution.
“We don’t agree with this gas pipeline megaproject because we were never informed about it. We were never consulted and therefore we don’t know the consequences,” said Maribel Cervantes, an activist and teacher who joined the lawsuit.
The government argued that the Southeast Gateway was a matter of national security and kept some information, including its exact route, secret. President Claudia Sheinbaum said last year that getting natural gas to the region was important.
Greenpeace warned that dredging to bury the pipeline could affect deep-water reefs that are home to many species, some not found on shallow reefs. Pablo Ramirez, Greenpeace Mexico’s energy and climate change program coordinator, also said methane leakage could affect ecosystems such as reefs. They protect important species including green and olive ridley sea turtles that nest on the beaches of communities such as Los Arecifaces.
In a video last September, TC Energy said that experts have “thoroughly analyzed the marine environment to ensure that the route is designed to protect the ecosystem.” The Canadian company declined an interview but said the pipeline created 4,000 jobs during construction and met all federal requirements. The project “brings natural gas to the southeast of Mexico for the first time, opening opportunities for economic and social development in one of the country’s poorest regions.”
Mexico’s push for natural gas
Mexico’s push for U.S. gas has set the date for a 2013 reform that opened its energy sector to private and foreign investment, said Victor Ramirez of energy consulting firm P21Energía. Its goal was to reduce the use of more polluting fuels such as fuel oil and coal, and to take advantage of the low price of natural gas in the US.
Now, as the U.S. seeks new markets for fracked gas from Texas’ Permian Basin, Mexico not only offers a strategic geographic location for re-exports but also a more favorable political climate to reach markets that the U.S. can’t easily access, said Wilmar Suarez, energy analyst at Ember.
In return, Mexico can sell that gas to other countries at a profit, Suarez said.
Southeast Gateway currently supplies gas only to the $20 billion Dos Bocas refinery, a flagship project of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and one of Mexico’s largest refineries. But if the government’s ambitious plans materialize, it could carry more than 1.3 billion cubic feet of gas per day.
Among them is the completion of another pipeline to connect the Southeast Gateway to a planned plant in Oaxaca that will convert the gas into liquids for transport to Asia. These plants burn part of the gas to power liquefaction, generating pollution emissions, said Claudia Campero of the Mexican nonprofit Climate Connection.
Liquefaction plants have drawn the most opposition in recent years. This includes the Saguaro Project, a planned 800-kilometer (500-mile) gas pipeline from Texas to the fishing community of Puerto Libertad in Sonora. There, the US company Mexico Pacific wants to build a plant to liquefy 15 million tonnes of gas per year for transport to Asia.
Such shipping would threaten whales through the Gulf of California because it’s a prime area for breeding, Campero said.
Due to litigation, the project is stalled.
Mexico’s first export terminal for liquefied natural gas is slated to begin operations in 2024, but more are planned. If all of them come online, Mexico will have eight along the Pacific coast, according to Global Energy Monitor. There are currently nine in the US.
Both Victor Ramirez and Suarez said Mexico’s natural gas strategy now threatens its energy sovereignty.
More than 60% of Mexico’s electricity comes from gas-fired power plants, and about 70% of that gas from the U.S. Fitch Ratings said last year that Mexico’s dependence on U.S.-piped gas would increase due to rising demand, insufficient domestic production and the construction of pipelines.
“It’s very easy for the US to impose certain conditions on Mexico because it dominates the gas supply,” Suarez said.
The Energy Ministry did not respond to requests for an interview.
Climate Commitments at Risk
Greenpeace’s Pablo Ramírez said Mexico would not be able to meet its goal of reducing net carbon dioxide emissions by 31% to 37% by 2035 if all pipeline projects were completed. And Amber’s Suarez said the strong focus on gas has fueled suspicions that Mexico’s electricity will double, from 02% to 40%. Promise by Sheinbaum.
Senbaum inherited most of the gas projects and must honor those commitments as the funds are invested, said Victor Ramirez of P21Energia. However, he felt hopeful that 20 private renewable energy projects had been approved by the Ministry of Energy in December.
Back in Maribel Cervantes’ backyard in San Juan Volador, where Mexico City’s powerful make energy policy decisions, she demanded that officials take communities like hers into account.
“As tribal people, we want to respect our right to autonomy and self-determination,” she said. “We don’t want them to impose their megaprojects on us.”
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De Miguel reported from Mexico City. Data journalist MK Wildman contributed from Hartford, Connecticut.
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