+/- $1 Billion In Tax Breaks In 10 Years Wasn't Enough For TX LNG Company; Local Official Suggested They Pay More, Fired

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Freeport LNG, one of the nation’s largest natural gas export terminals, has reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in state and local tax incentives over the past decade. One of those tax breaks is now under scrutiny in Texas following the firing of a small-town official who’d suggested it was time to demand more money. Tammi Cimiotta had been administrator for the tiny beach town of Quintana, Texas — population 25 — which sits in the shadow of the massive plant. She has charged that she was fired last spring by “corrupt” town council members who are employed by Freeport LNG or have financial ties to the company. “It’s because they work there,” Cimiotta told POLITICO’s E&E News in a recent phone interview. “They were scared to lose their job. If they’d voted on it, I guess, they had to answer to their boss.”

A federal lawsuit she filed over the summer also says the mayor and several of the council members who voted to fire her don’t live in Quintana, as required by law. The lawsuit’s allegations of a “property-tax avoidance scheme” orchestrated by Freeport LNG raises questions about how liquefied natural gas export plants lining the Gulf Coast maintain their tax incentives years after they’ve become operational and often profitable.

A 2023 analysis of tax breaks in the terminal’s home county of Brazoria — commissioned by critics of the company — said governments had given away tax breaks of nearly $2.2 billion over 10 years, with about half of that going to Freeport LNG, often referred to as FLNG. The study, done for a group called Better Brazoria, said FLNG’s tax breaks add up to $6 million for each promised job. More broadly, six of the giant terminals in Louisiana and Texas that have begun exporting gas in the past 10 years have been granted more than $20 billion in tax breaks, according to data compiled and released last year by the Sierra Club and local environmental groups. The groups said the subsidies siphon off money from schools, hospitals and road repairs to address the traffic they create.

Many other communities could soon be making similar decisions about giving up tax revenue in exchange for coastal development. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said recently that North American LNG export capacity could more than double by 2029. That would include some of the dozen or so U.S. LNG terminal projects that are on the drawing board or under construction. And the attention could spell more trouble for FLNG. It has been beset in recent years by repeated operational problems, including an explosion in 2022 that shut the plant for eight months and was attributed by experts in part to “hubris.”

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https://www.eenews.net/articles/firing-roils-texas-lng-company-town/