Revealed: how a US public university courted the gas industry despite climate impacts | Fossil fuels

One of Louisiana’s top public universities has prompted concerns about “corporate capture” over its expanding relationship with the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, despite environmental warnings about pollution and prolonging fossil fuel use.

As the US’s LNG boom gained momentum in south-west Louisiana, McNeese State University courted the industry to help launch a new LNG Center of Excellence currently under construction, hired a director doubling as an LNG industry lobbyist, and approached federal regulators to co-locate their own research center at the university, according to emails obtained via public records requests by DeSmog and the Guardian.

A divestment movement aimed at pushing back on the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long creep into classrooms of all levels has grown in recent years out of concerns that industry-sponsored academic research could be a vehicle for climate obstruction. But near the Texas border in Lake Charles, Louisiana, McNeese State University welcomed industry right on in.

McNeese’s leadership team and the LNG industry tout this partnership as mutually beneficial, offering the university funding while providing the industry with educated workers, relevant research, and input on policy. However, alumni, environmental advocates, and researchers say the move raises alarms about the impacts of the LNG build out on communities and potential conflicts of interest.

Jennie Stephens, a professor of climate justice at Maynooth University in Ireland, who co-authored a first-of-its-kind review of academic and civil society investigations into fossil fuel industry ties to higher education, said the McNeese LNG center is part of a larger pattern of private sector interests capturing public universities.

“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.

The university’s LNG center aims to serve as a “hub for research, workforce development and safety, and as a depository for best practices for the industry”, according to its former executive director Jason French, speaking in 2022. This May, the university broke ground on the 23,000 sq ft facility, which will include classrooms for students in what it calls the nation’s first LNG business undergraduate certificate and “industrial grade training facilities” that also will be open to LNG employees, according to a press release.

In recent years, McNeese’s relationship with the LNG industry gained momentum when LNG developer Tellurian sought federal approval to build Driftwood LNG gas export terminal 10 miles south of McNeese in 2018.

The company emailed the university’s then president, Daryl Burckel, for help. Internal emails obtained through public records requests show Burckel sent a verbatim letter of support ghostwritten by Tellurian to the federal regulator overseeing the construction of LNG export terminals. “University presidents are very busy managing many responsibilities,” current McNeese president Wade Rousse said in a written statement, “Requesting a sample letter for a project you already support illustrates that point.” Tellurian did not respond to requests for comment.

In May 2020, the head of the Lake Area Industry Alliance (LAIA), a lobbying group for industry in south-west Louisiana, raised the idea of an LNG Center of Excellence with Burckel. “I know some people of influence with Cameron LNG, Lake Charles LNG and Tellurian (Driftwood),” 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 [sic] interest, understand their needs and to get their input on what such a ‘center’ would look like.”

A review of internal emails and other documents show how McNeese then ran with the idea of an LNG center.

Tellurian went on to become one of the top donors to the university’s LNG Center of Excellence. The LNG company was among the area LNG developers who in 2021 recommended McNeese hire Jason French, a Tellurian lobbyist at the time, to head the center, which the university did. “It is counterintuitive to believe a university would start work on a Center of Excellence in LNG without engaging people working in that industry,” French said in a statement to DeSmog and the Guardian.

In the background of McNeese’s interest in creating its LNG center has been the possibility of convincing federal regulators to locate their own research center also at the university, the emails and documents show.

In 2021, Congress passed the Pipes Act of 2020, requiring the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) to create an LNG center.

Senator John Kennedy, a Republican of Louisiana – who received more than $26,000 in campaign donations from Tellurian between 2019 and 2024 – advocated for the PHMSA LNG center and drafted the legislation in a way that required that the center be located near LNG facilities along the Gulf coast. The following year, the university received a $2.8m grant from the US Economic Development Administration to build the university research center at McNeese to “enhance” the LNG industry.

Internal emails show French attempted to convince PHMSA to locate its LNG safety research center within the center at McNeese, which could allow companies to have proximity to researchers, students and regulators.

In her criticism of McNeese’s plans, Stephens highlighted concerns about tax dollars supporting public universities that deepened relationships with industries that have environmental and health impacts.

“I think people in the state have good reason to be concerned about this, and it is valuable to resist this corporate capture of our universities,” said Stephens, who did postdoctoral research at Harvard’s Kennedy School and has taught courses at Tufts, Boston University and MIT. She said: “It’s [American] tax dollars in a public state university that should be advancing the needs of the state, and not corporate interests that are extracting and causing ecological damage as well as human health damage.”

Previous reporting shows that another college, Louisiana State University’s Institute for Energy Innovation, was catalyzed by a $25m donation from Shell. In turn, the flagship university gave the company veto power for research activities.

A slideshow presentation about McNeese’s center lays out a similar model of industry-driven research, with $50,000 donations entitling companies to two votes and $20,000 entitling companies to one vote on the direction of research and development. Donation amounts could be determined by the size of a particular company. An industry advisory committee could select competitive proposals and conduct annual reviews to “ensure maximum benefit to the LNG industry and its stakeholders”, according to the presentation, which was used in a meeting with legislators and PHMSA officials.

The state and local governing bodies also rolled out the red carpet for Tellurian. While the company contributed $1m to McNeese’s $10m LNG center – with 20% earmarked for LNG undergraduate certificate scholarships – Tellurian received the single largest tax write-off in American history under Louisiana’s industrial tax exemption program for the Driftwood facility, a tax break worth $2.8bn, according to a Sierra Club report. A review of public records indicates that McNeese also secured funding through agreements with the Calcasieu parish police jury, the City of Lake Charles, and Lake Charles harbor and terminal district, with each agreement promising $500,000.

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.

This October, Tellurian was acquired by Australia-based oil and gas producer Woodside for $900m and rebranded as Woodside Louisiana LNG. A Woodside Energy spokesperson did not respond to specific questions, but said the company is investing $650,000 in Louisiana into local community initiatives and projects. Woodside is still integrating with Tellurian and reviewing inherited business relationships. In November, the company requested a pipeline construction deadline extension from the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, citing delays, including litigation and uncertainties related to leadership changes following the Woodside acquisition. The FERC has extended the overall project completion deadline to April 2029.

“McNeese State University, like most universities, relies on philanthropy to meet its mission. And, like most universities, McNeese engages with and studies the industries that create job opportunities for its students,” Rousse said in an emailed statement to DeSmog and the Guardian. “However, no supporter, corporate or otherwise, will ever direct our professors or make unilateral decisions about what is best for the university and its students.”

Jim Rock, head of the Lake Area Industry Alliance, did not answer specific questions but said that the three operating LNG export facilities in the Lake Charles area – in addition to five more proposed or under construction – offered good-paying jobs that demand well-trained students, which McNeese’s LNG Center of Excellence would be well suited to provide. “Supporting higher education institutions is nothing new for our area industries,” Rock said, adding that the industry has a history of collaborating with McNeese and the local K-12 schools. “This project is an extension of that rich history,” he said.

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.

Naomi Yoder, with the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Texas Southern University, said it was inappropriate for McNeese to hire an LNG industry insider to run an academic center. “The influence of the fossil-fuel industry in education right now in south-west Louisiana is already extreme. This recent arrangement is only a continuation and reinforcement of the ‘school to petrochem’ social pipeline that is already deeply ingrained in southwest Louisiana,” they said.

French’s previous roles included positions with BP, Cheniere, Tellurian and the Louisiana Energy Export Association. French and his business partner, Dawn Maisel Cole, registered with the state of Louisiana as Tellurian lobbyists in 2016 and 2017, respectively. In October of this year, French and Cole registered with the state as lobbyists for Woodside Energy.

French left his role as the LNG center’s executive director in May, the same month construction began on the McNeese LNG Center of Excellence. “My work as a consultant for McNeese has been focused on project management – raising funds, facilitating conversations with industry stakeholders, and getting the building to construction,” French said. “I achieved my goals with the center, and I resigned from the executive director role as I always intended.”

Rousse said French’s knowledge of the industry was a key factor in hiring him, and confirmed that French no longer serves as executive director now that the center is under construction.

Still, French continues to receive $1,000 per month from the university as a public affairs consultant under a contract set to expire at the end of the year. In an interview with DeSmog and the Guardian, he acknowledged that he served as a consultant to Tellurian while serving as the center’s director.

“That’s not something I’ve hidden. And I don’t think it conflicts with my role at the university,” he stated. French said he was brought on as someone with industry contacts to help develop the university LNG project and to assist with fundraising. “The role of the center in my mind was really to be something that the university and community could be proud of,” he said.

While the LNG undergraduate certificate program enables McNeese graduates to earn a living from LNG facilities, it overlooks the environmental and social costs, Ozane, a McNeese graduate and environmental campaigner, said. “It does not teach students about the communities that are impacted, the wetlands that are being obliterated,” she said. “Or how the methane emissions being released are warming our climate and implicitly contributing to these climate-induced disasters we’re facing.” This is consistent with a 2022 study finding fossil fuel–funded university research centers reporting more favorable policy positions towards the natural gas industry.

French said he was proud to have contributed to McNeese’s LNG center because of LNG’s role in lowering emissions from the coal it displaces. Some research suggests the opposite is true: one study published in the Energy Science & Engineering journal found that the greenhouse gas emissions of LNG are 33% higher than coal over a 20-year period.

James Hiatt, a graduate of McNeese and an environmental advocate noted that the McNeese campus had considerable damage from Hurricane Laura in 2020, a category 4 storm that bore the hallmark rapid intensification of climate change. “The school itself has been wrecked again and again by climate disasters that are completely, 100% caused by our collective dependency on fossil fuels, and these fossil-fuel companies continue down that path when there are other opportunities,” he said. “McNeese is pigeonholing students into continued dependence on fossil-fuel jobs.”

This week, the US Department of Energy released a much-anticipated update outlining its guidelines for evaluating whether LNG export applications to non-free trade agreement countries are in the “public interest”, and the energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm said a “business-as-usual approach is neither sustainable nor advisable”. Donald Trump has promised to immediately end a Biden administration moratorium on new LNG export permits when he returns to the White House in January.

• This story is co-published with DeSmog and is part of the Captured Audience series, which is supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

• Sara Sneath is a freelance investigative climate journalist based in New Orleans. In January 2025 she will take up a research analyst role at the Climate Accountability Lab at the University of Miami, led by Geoffrey Supran, who was a co-author with Jennie Stephens of the study mentioned in this article about industry ties to higher education.

• Natalie McLendon is a freelance journalist based in south-west Louisiana. She is a graduate of McNeese State University.