LA LNG Port Largest Single Investment In State's History: Also Largest Single Tax Break On Record - $2.8 Billion

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When Australia’s Woodside Energy Group announced April 29 that it plans to move forward with its Louisiana LNG export terminal, the state hailed the move as the “largest single foreign direct investment and greenfield project in Louisiana history.” It could also create perhaps the largest single local tax giveaway in U.S. history, under a Louisiana law offering corporations property tax breaks worth billions of dollars, a new Sierra Club study shared with DeSmog finds — representing a massive subsidy from Louisiana communities for exporting fossil fuels from the U.S. to Europe and Asia.

That property tax revenue would normally go to fund schools, libraries, and roads. Instead, it will be pocketed by Australia’s Woodside, which aquired Tellurian Inc. and its Driftwood LNG project located in Calcasieu Parish in October 2024. Woodside’s deal comes at a dire moment for local municipal budgets. Just three days after its announcement that it will forge ahead with the LNG project, the Trump administration announced massive reductions in federal funding for education, healthcare, and other domestic programs — which would leave communities across the country more reliant than ever on their local tax revenues.

Louisiana’s state-wide Industrial Tax Exemption Program (ITEP), which gives corporations discounts on their property taxes, has been dubbed “the biggest corporate welfare program in the nation,” and LNG projects are among its largest beneficiaries. “This project is still the single biggest application that the state has ever received under this program,” Sierra Club analyst Alison Kirsch, co-author of a December 2024 Sierra Club report on LNG subsidies, told DeSmog.

Sierra Club estimates Woodside’s tax break for that single application could be worth roughly $2.8 billion over 10 years (up slightly from an estimated $2.4 billion in 2018). That $2.8 billion handout to Woodside Energy could prove be a relative drop in the bucket as a wave of massive LNG export terminals comes online along the Gulf Coast. “If all of these terminals are built, together they will cost the residents of Calcasieu and Cameron Parishes $20.2 billion in lost revenue through 2040,” the December Sierra Club report, titled “The People Always Pay,” concluded.

EDIT

https://www.desmog.com/2025/05/02/louisiana-lng-tax-break-could-cost-local-communities-2-8-billion/

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