Mexico’s LNG Ambitions Face the Trump Era and Environmental Concerns

[By Emilio Godoy and Patrick Moore]

Last September, just off the Gulf coast of the Mexican city of Altamira, the country’s first shipment of liquefied natural gas (LNG) left a floating facility run by US company New Fortress Energy, bound for Europe.

The new venture is part of a wave of gas investment that has arrived in the country in recent years, targeting markets in Europe and Southeast Asia with US-produced, Mexico-processed natural gas, liquefied by cooling to -162C in a process that compresses its volume to allow for easier shipping.

Since the beginning of the decade, significant increases in global LNG infrastructure have been announced, with USD 1.1 trillion worth of new terminals under development as of last year. This has been driven by forecasts of growing gas demand in Asia, soaring output from the US, and Europe’s efforts to cut down on its dependency on Russian gas imports following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – a landscape that has led US producers to set their eyes on new ports on the Mexican coast that could shorten shipping routes to overseas markets.

But ambitions of a potential boom in Mexico may be running up against mixed weather in the global gas market, as well as political developments on both sides of the border. This includes the prospect of tensions between returned US president Donald Trump and his Mexican counterpart Claudia Sheinbaum over trade and tariffs, migration and a host of other issues.

Environmental campaigners, meanwhile, have continued to voice concerns over the potential consequences of a build-up in LNG infrastructure that could position Mexico as the world’s fourth-largest exporter of the fuel.

“The industry talks about gas being a transitional fuel and replacing coal in Asia, but that is not the case. It is more polluting than coal, because of all the steps involved in exporting it,”