One of Louisiana’s top public universities has prompted concerns about “corporate capture” over its expanding relationship with the liquefied natural gas industry, despite environmental warnings about pollution and prolonging fossil fuel use.
“It’s a classic example of academic capture where the private interests use the public infrastructure for their own profit-seeking motives rather than the needs of the community or the state,” she said after hearing details of the reporting by DeSmog and the Guardian. In May 2020, the head of the Lake Area Industry Alliance , a lobbying group for industry in south-west Louisiana,of an LNG Center of Excellence with Burckel. “I know some people of influence with Cameron LNG, Lake Charles LNG and Tellurian ,” the executive director of the LAIA, Jim Rock, wrote to Burckel. “If you are interested, I could try to arrange a discussion with them to gage interest, understand their needs and to get their input on what such a ‘center’ would look like.
Lake Charles, a major industrial center of south-west Louisiana with a population of over 84,000, is poised to house McNeese’s LNG Center of Excellence and the new PHMSA Center of Excellence for LNG Safety. The federal agency confirmed it had narrowed the siting of its facility to Lake Charles and that McNeese is among the locations being considered.There has been a boom of oil and gas projects in Louisiana in recent years, including in the area around Lake Charles.
Roishetta Sibley Ozane, a graduate of McNeese and a local environmental justice leader, said fossil-fuel project developers often find support in wealthier, white community leaders who are less likely to be affected by pollution from the proposed facilities. “But the people most impacted by these projects are the last consulted,” she said.