A federal judge in Brownsville denied a pipeline company’s request to condemn and transfer ownership of land that its pipeline project would run through, saying the action was “premature.”
First reported by Law360, Enbridge, the Canadian energy company which owns a 137-mile-long Rio Bravo Pipeline (RBP) project in the Port of Brownsville, filed the suit last year after not being able to contact the owners of 5 acres the pipeline would run across. The 5-acre property is owned by Carlos F. Alfonso and Margot Villa, according to the lawsuit.
To circumvent not being able to contact the property owners, Enbridge filed a suit claiming eminent domain of the land under the Natural Gas Act and asked to condemn the property and transfer ownership to the company. Enbridge claimed not accessing the land to conduct the several surveys the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) requires would harm the project.
Judge Rolando Olvera denied the claim, saying Enbridge “has not shown it will be immediately and irreparably harmed” if it did not access the property.
As part of the approval, FERC is requiring Enbridge complete civil, environmental, archaeological and cultural surveys 45 days before the company builds the pipeline. RBP is cleared to start construction in September 2025 with a service deadline of November 22, 2026, according to the lawsuit. RBP is funneling all of the gas the Rio Grande LNG plant is exporting.
Olvera wrote that Enbridge did not prove there wasn’t enough time to notify the owners before seeking to condemn the property through the courts. The judge noted that Enbridge posted condemnation notices in the Brownsville Herald last November as an example. Olvera also writes that the court was not “persuaded” in Enbridge citing the Natural Gas Act as authority to access the land.
The RBP is meant to supply gas to the Rio Grande LNG plant, running from Agua Dulce, Texas, to the Port of Brownsville. Enbridge, a part owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline, received federal approval to build the pipeline in 2019.
FERC approved the pipeline again last year after a D.C. Circuit court ruled the agency did not adequately measure the climate justice impacts of RBP and Rio Grande LNG on surrounding communities. The second approval was criticized as not taking the court’s ruling seriously, particularly from within FERC itself.
On Feb. 2, the City of Port Isabel, the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, the Sierra Club and Vecinos para el Bienestar de la Comunidad Costera, the same groups which sued FERC’s first approval of the gas projects, filed a motion to stop construction of the Rio Bravo Pipeline and the Rio Grande LNG plant until a lawsuit by the same groups is ruled on.
That lawsuit challenges FERC’s reapproval of the RBP and Rio Grande LNG projects, which the groups says doesn’t factor in the greenhouse gasses the projects would emit, the demographics of the communities who would be affected by those emissions and whether the projects are really in the public’s interest. FERC denied the groups’ request to stop construction at Rio Grande LNG when they asked the regulator in January.
Rio Grande LNG began clearing the nearly 800-acre project site last year after getting the funds necessary to do so. The project is not cleared to construct the facilities that will convert the pipeline-fed gas to liquid until it finishes its cost sharing and emergency response plans.
