Promising U.S. “energy dominance,” the Trump administration is moving to accelerate fossil fuel production. Key to this agenda is the approval of liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities across Gulf Coast communities that are disproportionately Black, Brown, and low-income, long treated as expendable “sacrifice zones” by the fossil fuel industry.

Just recently, on May 23, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) reauthorized the massive CP2 LNG in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, which will be the biggest LNG export facility in the U.S.

Local organizers and climate groups have been fighting the expansion of these “methane export facilities” which they say will intensify climate chaos and environmental racism. To try to halt them, they’re focusing on key actors behind these fossil fuel projects: the big financiers and insurers whose services these projects need in order to gain regulatory approval and to be built and operated.

A new report by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) maps out the known insurers of the buildout of LNG export facilities in Southwest Louisiana and discusses the numerous financial and reputational risks these companies face in propping up an industry tied to a volatile market fueling climate crisis and threatening local communities.

“They’re financing and insuring environmental racism because these projects are overwhelmingly situated in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities they feel are the path of least resistance,” Roishetta Ozane, founder of the Vessel Project in Lake Charles, Louisiana, told Truthout.

Gulf Coast “Sacrifice Zones”

U.S. exports of LNG, or fracked gas that has been cooled into liquid to ship, have boomed over the past decade. LNG has been promoted by the fossil fuel industry as a cleaner “bridge fuel” toward renewable energy, a debunked claim that some view as a form of greenwashing. The production, transport, processing, and burning of fracked gas releases large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

The U.S. is the world’s top exporter of fracked gas. In recent years, the fossil fuel industry and its Wall Street investors have sought to expand U.S. LNG export facilities. Immediately after his January 2025 inauguration, Donald Trump restarted applications for new LNG export terminals that were paused by Joe Biden a year earlier.

The epicenter of the buildout has been the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast, where there are currently around two dozen LNG expansion projects being constructed or proposed. These facilities are located in places like Port Arthur, Texas, and Cameron Parish, Louisiana, communities that are overwhelmingly Black, Brown, and low-income, and where clusters of toxic refining and petrochemical plants have long operated.

The United Nations has called areas like these “sacrifice zones,” defined as “extremely contaminated areas where vulnerable and marginalized groups bear a disproportionate burden of the health, human rights and environmental consequences of exposure to pollution and hazardous substances.” Research shows that local Black, Brown, and Indigenous workers do not benefit equitably from the jobs and other economic benefits the fossil fuel industry often promises when building new facilities.

A 2024 Greenpeace report found that the building of planned LNG projects would result annually in 149 premature deaths and $2.33 billion in health costs, with areas in Southwest Louisiana “slated to suffer the worst air pollution impacts per capita” and with air pollution from LNG terminals disproportionately affecting Black and Brown residents.

Environmental Racism and Climate Crisis

According to a new report by RAN, over 20 additional LNG expansion projects have been proposed in the Gulf Coast region in addition to six existing export terminals. These enormous projects have names like Sabine Pass LNG, Cameron LNG, and Calcasieu Pass LNG. Their corporate backers include Sempra, Energy Transfer, Cheniere, Kimmeridge, and Venture Global.

These facilities, however, are far from uncontested, facing major opposition from community organizers like Roishetta Ozane.

A mother of six who lives just outside Lake Charles, Louisiana, Ozane founded the Vessel Project in 2020 amid her efforts to help the community respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and displacement from Hurricanes Laura and Delta. The Vessel Project uses mutual aid to build community and create the conditions for sustained organizing for environmental justice.

“We make sure that people’s immediate needs are met before we talk about stopping an LNG facility,” she told Truthout. “That way, we’ve been able to grow our base of community members who show up at meetings and town halls and who travel with us to D.C. or New York City.”

Ozane spoke of the environmental and health fallouts her community has suffered living “right in the midst of a mixture of industries,” including explosions, fires, and smoke clouds at petrochemical plants, with consequences for her own family. “We get all the cumulative impacts living in a fenceline community,” she said. “My children have asthma and eczema. My son has epilepsy, which I believe was exacerbated by the pollution from the facilities.”

As Ozane responded to crisis after crisis, she started making connections between the environmental racism and extreme weather her community experienced and the wider climate crisis tied to local industries. “I was trying to connect the dots for people,” she said. “All of these facilities are releasing gas into the air, and it’s what’s warming our planet. It’s what’s causing these storms to be more severe.”

Going After the Insurers

Organizing to halt the buildout of LNG export facilities and other fossil fuel infrastructure has led Ozane and others toward a concerted strategy: pressuring big financiers and insurers to stop propping up these projects.

“The banks and the insurance companies are the ones actually supporting the fossil fuel industry behind the scenes,” Ruth Breech of RAN, and a coauthor of the RAN report, told Truthout.

The past decade has seen the climate and environmental justice movement target the money behind the fossil fuel industry, such as banks JPMorgan and Citi, asset managers like BlackRock and Vanguard, and insurers like AIG and Liberty Mutual. While ExxonMobil or Chevron may cling to its core business of oil and gas production, these financial firms are more diversified, risk-averse and susceptible to public shaming.

“If our elected officials are going to approve these projects, then our hope lies in the banks and the investors and the insurance companies,” said Ozane.

Ozane co-leads the Gulf South Fossil Finance Hub, a coalition aimed at bringing pressure from local communities to bear on these financial giants. “We bring frontline folks in front of these banks and insurance companies to say you’re insuring and financing environmental racism,” she said.

More than any other financial backers, insurance corporations may be most vulnerable around fossil fuels, since climate chaos presents an existential threat to the industry’s business model.

The RAN report, which the Vessel Project and Gulf South Fossil Finance Hub signed onto, maps out some of the known insurers, based on information from FOIA requests and lawsuit filings, behind Southwest Louisiana’s LNG export buildout. For example, insurers behind Cameron LNG include Chubb, AIG, Allianz, Liberty Mutual, Munich Re, Swiss Re, Zurich, Tokio Marine, The Hartford, and others, according to RAN.

The report highlights the significant risks for insurers in underwriting the Gulf Coast LNG buildout, including financial instability tied to regulatory and construction delays and the problem of oversupply and overcapacity with these facilities. Multiple reports warn that U.S. shale production is facing decline in prices and market volatility.

The report also notes the reputational and financial risks to insurers that prop up an industry that perpetuates harmful health impacts, safety hazards, climate risks, and disruptions to local ecosystems. LNG export facilities have been plagued by thousands of permit violations and extensive operational problems and accidents, with one of the most infamous being a 2022 explosion and fire at Freeport LNG that led to an eight-month shutdown.

“They Know Me by Name”

Both Breech and Ozane emphasized the hypocrisy behind the insurance industry’s continued underwriting of fossil fuels. “We’re seeing people across the nation lose their home insurance coverage because of the impacts of climate change,” said Breech. “Then we’re seeing these insurance companies continue to provide insurance for new fossil fuel projects.”

Ozane said it’s frustrating to see insurers prop up an industry in her community that is driving the very climate chaos that’s making home insurance in Louisiana unaffordable. “For insurance companies to insure one of these climate monsters, and then turn around and not insure the people who live in the communities at a reasonable rate, is outright wrong,” she said.

For RAN and the Vessel Project, the global insurance powerhouse Chubb has been a key focus. Breech says Chubb CEO Evan Greenberg is “an influencer personality” within the insurance industry, similar to JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon in banking. Chubb has also been open to engaging with community members. Ozane has met with representatives from Chubb several times, bringing her children to the meetings. “They know me by name,” she says.

In 2024, Chubb reported dropping 32 major oil and gas clients who didn’t meet its methane emissions standards. Chubb has dropped its coverage of the Rio Grande LNG, a proposed LNG export terminal in Brownsville, Texas, and it ruled out insuring the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. As recently reported by Inside Climate News, Chubb also dropped its coverage of Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass LNG.

But for organizers like Ozane, Chubb isn’t going far enough. She wants them to rule out insuring another LNG export terminal, Venture Global’s huge CP2, which just received FERC approval. Ozane told Truthout that she’s currently trying to arrange a “toxic tour” for FERC so the commission can see the cumulative impacts of the fossil fuel industry on her community.

According to the Sierra Club LNG Export Tracker, CP2’s annual emissions will be the equivalent of 54 coal burning power plants once two phases of expansion are completed.

CP2’s insurers are currently unknown, RAN reports.

“If you’re insuring this project, you’re ensuring this community’s destruction,” Ozane said. “It would be easy for Chubb to say, if CP2 gets all of its permits, we’re not going to insure them.”

Truthout contacted Chubb to ask if the company was insuring CP2, and also if its decision to drop coverage of Calcasieu Pass LNG could mean Chubb would decide to not insure CP2, but received no response.

RAN told Truthout that it’s demanding Chubb drop its coverage of Cameron LNG by June and Freeport LNG by October, and that it stops insuring all “methane terminals.”

Chubb CEO Evan Greenberg took in $82 million in total compensation between 2022 and 2024. By contrast, the per capita income in Lake Charles, Louisiana, is $35,847, with a poverty rate of 23.2 percent, according to census data.

“We Can’t Take Anymore”

The RAN report demands that banks and insurers stop supporting fossil fuel expansion projects. It also demands that banks and insurance companies “follow a human rights due diligence framework” and consult with community leaders and organizations from municipalities and parishes where LNG export facilities are being sited to identify and assess human rights risks, and for these companies to do their own site visits to conduct human rights, environmental and environmental justice assessments.

“We’re talking about serious human rights implications in these projects,” said Breech. “Southwest Louisiana is not an energy sacrifice zone, and it’s not acceptable to have all of these proposals in this area.”

With hurricane season approaching, Ozane stresses the urgency of halting the LNG export buildout that’s blanketing her community. She is hosting a hurricane preparedness festival highlighting the intersection of fossil fuel pollution and climate-induced disasters.

Truthout asked Ozane what she would say to Chubb CEO Evan Greenberg if she could speak directly to him.

“I would say that if you insure CP2 you are insuring the death of my children and my community,” she said. “We are already suffering from the pollution that’s coming from the surrounding facilities. We can’t take anymore.”

Truthout also asked Ozane what victory would ultimately look like for her.

“Victory looks like we are no longer dependent on fossil fuels here and that there’s another economy here,” she said. “We’re back to our fishermen being able to live off of fishing and oysters and shrimping. We see a beautiful coast free of the industry that’s now polluting the water.”

“Victory will look like my 7-year-old going outside to play without coming back into the house saying that he can’t breathe,” she says.