BROWNSVILLE — Rio Grande LNG wants the Valley to know it is not finished.
BROWNSVILLE — Rio Grande LNG wants the Valley to know it is not finished.
"Rio Grande LNG Phase 1 is only the beginning," the company posted on Facebook this week, over aerial footage of cranes and steel along the Brownsville Ship Channel. "Trains 4 and 5 are currently under construction. Trains 6-8 are in development."
The post is accurate. It is also the clearest public signal yet of how big NextDecade Corp. intends the plant on State Highway 48 to become.
Built out, the Houston company says the site could produce 48 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas a year. That is more than five times the 2019 plan many Valley residents first heard about. The lease has room for up to 10 trains.
And it is arriving at a moment when the world is short on gas.
WHERE THINGS STAND
NextDecade released its third-quarter update on Oct. 29. The numbers show a plant moving from construction toward operation.
Trains 1 and 2 were 79.7 percent complete as of September. Train 3 was 55.2 percent complete. Trains 4 and 5, which broke ground in fall 2025, were at 22.5 and 14.0 percent. Most of that early work is engineering and equipment orders. Construction on Trains 4 and 5 was under 3 percent.
Channel dredging for the berths and turning basin is done. The Bay Runner pipeline is in service. The gas inlet facilities are ready for start-up.
The company expects to bring natural gas into the plant before the end of this year. It expects to produce its first LNG in the spring of 2027.
"The progress achieved to date continues to strengthen our confidence in our projected Phase 1 start-up timeline," NextDecade Chairman and CEO Matt Schatzman said in the release. The company says the project is on budget and ahead of schedule. Those are NextDecade's claims and have not been independently verified.
In September, federal regulators approved a capacity increase for the first five trains to 30.15 million tonnes a year.
WHAT "IN DEVELOPMENT" ACTUALLY MEANS
Trains 6, 7 and 8 are not at the same stage.
Train 6 is furthest along. On May 26, a NextDecade subsidiary, Rio Grande LNG Train 6, LLC, filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build what it calls the Rio Grande LNG Expansion Project. It has two main pieces: one new liquefaction train and one new marine jetty, called Berth 3.
The company says the land-side facilities will sit mostly inside the footprint of the terminal FERC already authorized. The water side is a different story. Berth 3 would be built in an area still to be dredged along the Brownsville Ship Channel, west of the plant's two existing jetties. According to the company, it would have two LNG loading arms, one vapor return arm, and one hybrid arm that can do either.
A federal notice says the expansion would add about 6 million tonnes a year and raise the number of LNG tankers authorized to call at the terminal to 510 a year.
That is roughly 1.4 tankers a day through the same channel used by shrimp boats and weekend anglers. A third berth is what makes that traffic possible.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued its permit for Train 6 in September. FERC has not approved it. The agency's final environmental review is scheduled for June 25, 2027. NextDecade wants to make a final investment decision in the second half of that year.
Trains 7 and 8 have not entered federal permitting. NextDecade says it plans to start that process with FERC before year-end. When it does, a new round of public scoping meetings would follow.
One correction worth making: some coverage this year described Train 6 alone as bringing the site to about 48 million tonnes. The filings do not say that. The 48 figure is the company's total for all eight trains.
WHY NOW
The answer is roughly 8,000 miles away.
In early March, Qatar halted LNG production after Iranian drone strikes on its Ras Laffan and Mesaieed industrial cities, CNBC reported. Goldman Sachs estimated the shutdown removed about 19 percent of near-term global supply.
The damage has lasted. QatarEnergy expects repairs at Ras Laffan to take up to five years and has declared force majeure on some long-term contracts, according to an August Oilprice.com report citing Reuters. Rystad Energy estimated this month that Qatar's conflict-related losses will reach 64.8 million tonnes this year, with spot LNG prices pushing toward $30 per MMBtu.
NextDecade is not shy about what that means. In its update, the company said strong spot prices driven by the loss of Middle East supply could lift its margins on uncontracted cargoes above $6 per MMBtu, more than $1 above its base case.
Put plainly, a plant outside Port Isabel is about to sell into one of the tightest gas markets in years. The five trains under construction alone would replace close to half of what Rystad estimates Qatar lost in 2026.
There is also a business reason the company is pushing past Phase 1. NextDecade owns rights to only about 20.8 percent of the cash from Trains 1 through 3, with larger stakes in Trains 4 and 5. Trains 6 through 8 are 100 percent NextDecade. The biggest payoff for its shareholders sits in the trains not yet approved.
Not everyone expects the boom to last. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis has argued the price shock is pushing Asian importers toward clean energy, which could shrink long-term LNG demand. Trains 6 through 8 would not produce gas until near the end of the decade.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE VALLEY
Jobs. A NextDecade official told UTRGV's student newspaper, The Rider, this year that Bechtel's workforce is about 5,500 people, 70 percent of them local, and that the finished plant will employ about 700 people at roughly $100,000 a year. The Texas Observer reported the company defines "local" as anyone within 100 miles of the site, a radius that reaches McAllen. The 956 Report has not independently verified the hiring figures.
Taxes. In 2017, Cameron County commissioners approved a 16-year tax abatement for Rio Grande LNG on a 4-1 vote. County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr. voted no. Opponents have valued the break at about $373 million. Point Isabel ISD, the school district closest to the plant, rejected the company's request for a school tax break in 2016. It has turned down every LNG developer that has asked. Whether the county abatement covers the expansion trains is an open question.
Air. FERC has estimated that six trains would emit about 6.5 million tons of greenhouse gases a year, according to reporting by the Texas Observer and the Pulitzer Center. NextDecade once proposed a carbon capture system it said would cut emissions by 90 percent. It dropped that plan in August 2024. The first gas expected this winter also starts commissioning, a phase that can involve flaring. The 956 Report has asked about the commissioning schedule. (EDITOR: confirm request is sent before publishing, or cut this sentence.)
The channel. Port Isabel City Manager Jared Hockema has said the export plants threaten the area's tourism and fishing economies, the Texas Observer reported. Shrimpers have told reporters that channel work and vessel traffic hurt their catch. Neither claim has been tested by a formal study that The 956 Report could locate.
The neighbors. Rio Grande LNG will not be alone. Glenfarne's Texas LNG, a smaller 4-million-tonne terminal, is planned next door and issued a limited notice to proceed to its contractor in July. A refinery has been announced at the Port of Brownsville. SpaceX's Starbase sits down the coast at Boca Chica. Each project is permitted on its own. The people of Port Isabel, Laguna Heights and Laguna Vista live with all of them at once.
THE FIGHT IS NOT OVER
The City of Port Isabel, the Sierra Club and the South Texas Environmental Justice Network are back in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Their petition, filed in December 2025, challenges FERC's latest approval of the plant. Opening briefs were filed in May. No ruling has been issued.
They have won before. In August 2024, the same court threw out FERC's reauthorization over flaws in its environmental justice review, its handling of a nearby air monitor and the dropped carbon capture plan. Seven months later, the court changed course and let construction continue while FERC redid the work.
That history is the lesson. Legal challenges have slowed Rio Grande LNG. They have not stopped it.
Port Isabel, South Padre Island, Long Island Village and Laguna Vista have all passed resolutions against LNG. Brownsville and Cameron County leaders have backed the project.
WHAT TO WATCH
Before Dec. 31: first gas into the plant, and NextDecade's FERC pre-filing for Trains 7 and 8.
Pending: a D.C. Circuit ruling, and a final investment decision on Texas LNG.
Spring 2027: first LNG production.
June 25, 2027: FERC's final environmental review of Train 6.
HOW TO WEIGH IN
The Train 6 expansion is under FERC Docket No. CP26-532. Anyone can read the filings and submit comments through FERC's eLibrary.
The formal deadline to intervene, which gives a person or group legal standing to challenge FERC's decision in court, passed on June 30. The early scoping comment period closed April 8. Comments can still be filed on the docket. FERC typically opens another public comment period when it releases a draft environmental review, which would come before the final review due June 2027.
FERC eLibrary search: elibrary.ferc.gov/eLibrary/search
How to participate: ferc.gov/participating-online-ferc
FERC Office of Public Participation: ferc.gov/OPP
NextDecade has set up a contact line for questions or concerns about the expansion: rglngexpansion@next-decade.com or 1-888-642-9193.
The company calls it "What's NEXT," a nod to its stock ticker. For the Laguna Madre, the next 14 months will decide how large "only the beginning" becomes.
---
Sources: NextDecade Q3 2026 business update (Oct. 29, 2026); Federal Register notice 2026-11880 (June 12, 2026); FERC; Rystad Energy (Oct. 2, 2026); CNBC (March 3, 2026); Oilprice.com/Reuters (Aug. 26, 2026); IEEFA; Texas Observer; Pulitzer Center; The Rider (UTRGV); The Center Square; Port Isabel-South Padre Press (Oct. 6, 2017); Texas Standard; Climate Case Chart, D.C. Cir. No. 25-1284; Glenfarne.
Comments