Energy Landscapes: Gulf Coast LNG

The Gulf Coast is mid-transformation. LNG export capacity is expanding rapidly — new terminals, new pipeline laterals, new berths — alongside ageing petrochemical infrastructure and the first cohort of low-carbon industrial facilities oriented toward a different market.

The geography is distinctive. Facilities are sited at the interface of land, river, and sea, in terrain that barely qualifies as land — marsh grass, open water, industrial concrete, and sky in roughly equal proportion.

What the landscape makes visible is the simultaneity of energy eras. Decades-old cracker units operating beside brand-new export compressor stations. The transition isn’t sequential. It’s layered.