Oil and natural gas that have been turned into chemicals, plastics, fertilizers, clothing, and pesticides are known as petrochemicals, and they are the subject of increased scrutiny across the media because of the devastating harm they wreak in communities across the U.S.  

Take for example two new landmark reports released last month by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that detailed how near-absent regulatory schemes in Texas and Louisiana, respectively, have allowed fossil fuel and petrochemical facilities to pollute without accountability, poison local communities, and rake in billions of profit. 

Residents along Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” an 85-mile stretch along the lower Mississippi River where about 200 fossil fuel and petrochemical facilities sit, face extreme exposure to air pollution. The recent Human Rights Watch report found that in the regions with the worst air pollution, where residents are disproportionately Black, instances of low birth weights are three times the national average and preterm births are two and half times the national average. Investigators found that the industry specifically chose neighborhoods in southern Louisiana to place its most toxic and polluting facilities.

In Texas, researchers evaluated the air and water impacts of the 600 chemical facilities along the Houston Ship Channel. According to the report, life expectancy for Black and Latinx residents living near the shipping channel is up to 20 years lower than that of neighboring majority-white communities. Each day, hundreds of thousands of pounds of liquid waste are dumped into waterways where residents fish and spend recreational time.

The single largest contributor to the climate crisis lives in these residents’ backyards. 

According to advocacy organizations, the environmental hazards found across these two Gulf Coast states are human rights abuses bolstered by local, state, and federal agencies that both ignore community calls for monitoring and assist companies in conducting this harm by refusing to investigate or regulate the pollution they create. In many cases, government action doesn’t address the realities of the hazards. Take, for example, the Biden Administration’s recent moratorium on new liquified natural gas export facilities. Plastics production is still predicted to double by 2040. When asked by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! if the problems of pollution can be regulated away, the lead investigator for the Human Rights Watch report said, “The answer is ultimately no.”

The relationship between industry and government isn’t an accident. In her 2023 analysis of the petrochemical industry called “Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation,” environmental studies professor Alice Mah writes that the fossil fuel industry meticulously planned its outgrowth into petrochemical production as a way of locking in “needs” for extraction. The industry did this by creating new products to counter the losses from an energy transition while profiting from environmental destruction. For instance, in the three summer months of 2022, ExxonMobil (a company that predicted the climate crisis with alarming accuracy) reported $19.7 billion in net income. 

No one knows the hold that petrochemical companies have on communities better than those who have worked in government and at the grassroots level to bring about change. This is why Prism wanted to speak to Sheila Serna, a former inspector for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the former policy director at the Laredo, Texas, environmental justice organization Rio Grande International Study Center. In a January phone call, we discussed “Petrochemical Planet,” how organizers can subvert industry manipulation, and Texas’ unwavering support of the oil and gas industry. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Ray Levy Uyeda: One of the key points of Alice Mah’s “Petrochemical Planet” is that the petrochemical industry shapeshifts or morphs in response to regulations, public sentiment, and climate change. The author questions how the industry continues to prosper in the face of many decades of activism and growing public awareness. I think she’s suggesting that collectively—across all levels of activism—we need to develop a stronger analysis of how the industry operates in order to out-strategize it. This is a big ask. What are some ways you’ve deepened and changed organizing tactics?

Sheila Serna: I think that’s what activists and organizers across the border are still working on because we’ve recently seen a surge of greenwashing. ExxonMobil came out with a commercial that said, “Let’s make oil and gas greener.” It was right around the time when the Biden Administration released its supplemental methane rule [which mandates that corporations use sensors to calculate leaks for sites with any number of wells]. It’s smart of ExxonMobil to do, but it also reinforces why organizers and environmental organizations need to continue the work that we’re doing. It’s important not just in the community, but also on the federal level because industry is always at their ear. You need the same number of people engaging with federal agencies and people on the Hill from the other side—that’s where communities come in. 

Levy Uyeda: According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), oil and gas are the largest industrial sources of methane emissions in the USA, with 430 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emanating from refining and petrochemical facilities each year. Even with the new methane rule, states are still able to set their own emissions standards and hand out penalties. But this is very rare in states like Texas, where the regulatory agency issues fines in less than 3% of cases. What impact do you think that rule might have on emissions? 

Serna: The EPA does not have the resources to do its own emissions calculations for these facilities because there are hundreds in Texas and thousands across the country. What’s going to happen is that these companies are going to self-report the amount of methane that they’ve released and then show the EPA that the mechanisms and the calculations that they did to get to that number are true and accurate. That’s a step forward. However, you have states like Texas that are most likely going to fight against this rule and might just sue the EPA for trying to impose stricter regulations on states. There’s reform that’s needed on the state level, but so much politics comes into play.

Levy Uyeda: Those commercials you mentioned before play such a critical role in mis-educating the public about the harms that these companies actually inflict—environmental injustices on local communities and climate harms on the earth more broadly. Now we’re also seeing them rewrite the pollution embedded in their own history by pivoting to “renewable” energy—pushing a product that now has the political backing of the White House. 

I’m curious about the role geography plays. I live in the Bay Area where we don’t have as large an oil industry as places in Texas, so we’re not as heavily targeted by these greenwashing ads. How do you have these conversations with people who come from communities in southern Texas? 

Serna: I would say that community outreach and engagement is probably the toughest part of my job because you have all of these competing forces. Not to mention you have people who rely on oil and gas jobs. People can get really defensive, or they don’t really want to see that there is a way out of the [oil and gas] machine. At the same time, I think they have every right to be protective of what feeds and takes care of their families. It’s in those initial conversations where, as an organizer working with an environmental organization, I have to be very aware and patient with community members who might not understand all the ins and outs because it’s a lot to take in. It’s a lot of information. It’s a hard pill to swallow. 

Levy Uyeda: Definitely. Nearly half a million people in Texas work in the fossil fuel industry. For many years the environmental movement was co-opted by white environmentalists, which really splintered focus away from demands for justice, including demands for good-paying jobs that aren’t a part of these harmful industries. That splintering allowed extractive industries to very convincingly message ecosystem care and economic well-being as mutually exclusive. Calls for a Just Transition are coming back into focus because of the leadership of Black and brown organizers and residents of communities saddled with pollution. 

Serna: One of the things I learned from the many environmental climate conferences that I attended in the past year is that we need to come up with a concise and strong message that we can say and support across the board. But back to your [earlier] question, I mean, it’s no small feat to try to educate community members. It’s no small feat to try to open people’s minds and hearts to the fact that we ourselves are part of the problem, right? For example, are we flipping a switch and just having our air conditioner blowing in our face all day? Of course. Some can make changes easier than others. Others have more challenges—there are economic factors that come into play. But I think really what it comes down to is understanding consumerism and understanding that we are part of the “demand” problem. We vote with our dollars. 

Levy Uyeda: In “Petrochemical Planet,” the author describes how well these companies know the rules and regulations related to things like petrochemical production, toxic release inventory, and shipment to low-wealth countries. This knowledge enables them to either skirt the laws or help craft new ones that support their industries. Sometimes this looks like Texas’ Senate Bill 471, which says the state’s Commission on Environmental Quality doesn’t have to investigate new complaints of pollution if there are multiple from one community. In other cases, industry operators have banded together to create things like the Houston Regional Monitoring Corporation, which positions itself as an independent non-governmental air monitor but actually exists to cover up increasing levels of air pollution. This makes me wonder what regulations would need to be put in place to actually support public health?

Serna: Oh my god, so many. In Texas we have the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the Railroad Commission. Both oversee the same industry, but there’s no mechanism for communication between the two agencies. That’s a problem in and of itself. The governor of Texas also appoints commissioners to the TCEQ. TCEQ lets oil and gas facilities set up well sites anywhere, as long as they meet a 50-foot distance from the nearest property. It’s outrageous that an extractive entity can literally set up behind someone’s house because they meet the 50-foot requirement. Other examples include companies that can inject saltwater that was used to extract gas back underground, increasing the potential that the underground water supply will be polluted. Companies are allowed to dump leftover chemicals and mud from fracking into “waste pits” that are literally just holes in the ground that aren’t reinforced with plastic or concrete lining to prevent leaching. I mean, there are so many things that they could do better. The amount of burden they place on people is just shocking.