September 30, 2026 — In Cameron, Louisiana, all the RV parks are full.
Venture Global, a Virginia-based liquefied natural gas developer valued at around $36 billion, broke ground on a new multi-phase LNG plant in Cameron in August of 2019. Today, the first part of the plant—Calcasieu Pass 1, or CP1—is fully operational, cooling methane to -260 degrees Fahrenheit and preparing it for transport through the TransCameron Pipeline, a subterranean straw 24 miles long and 42 inches in diameter that undercuts the Louisiana Gulf Coast. The construction of CP2 is currently underway.
To get through multiple construction phases, Venture Global needed thousands of temporary workers, which is why the town is overflowing with camper trailers and trucks with out-of-state license plates.
Put simply, these plants are enormous. Venture Global has a permit from the Department of Energy to export more than 640 billion cubic feet of LNG per year, or 1.75 billion cubic feet per day, from the Calcasieu Pass facilities to free trade agreement and non-FTA nations alike. CP1 covers 432 acres of land, or more than 327 football fields, plus a mile of coastline. It has two berths for conventional LNG carrier ships, which can haul 185,000 cubic meters of LNG at a time and stretch nearly 1,000 feet long. CP2 is slated to be more than 2.5 times the size of CP1.
Brian DeBarge and Anthony “Tad” Theriot sit on Theriot’s 65-foot shrimp boat. It’s docked in the Gulf of Mexico, near the Calcasieu Ship Channel on the edge of Cameron, looking out over a horizon riddled with construction cranes and mountains of dirt. Dust dims the whole scene. A rusty barge that seems as big as a Boeing 747 floats by, dangling a long, clumsy chunk of pipeline from chains while a team of fluorescent-clad workers in welding masks runs around the ship’s deck. The wake picks up.
“I just don’t know how much these people think we can take,” DeBarge tells Atmos, watching the ship pass.
LNG burns cleaner than coal, positioning it as something of a golden child that rakes in money for the American energy industry while checking boxes for emission-reduction goals in the European Union. But back home in Cameron Parish, life has become hellish for DeBarge, Theriot, and their friend Philip Dyson, who shows up a little later. All three are multi-generational commercial fishermen who watched the LNG boom stomp out the shrimp-rich estuaries and oyster beds of coastal Louisiana over the last few years. All three have spent ample time sharing their stories with the media—stories of financial ruin, polluted and heavily trafficked waterways, family members injured in traffic accidents and sickened by cement dust, and looming fear for the future. All three still lack hope that anything’s going to change.
They aren’t alone. Many shrimpers in LNG boom communities used to make six-figure salaries and put their kids through college. Now, they struggle to afford healthcare and buy groceries on credit. Insurance has become a nice-to-have, while gas is an increasingly pricey necessity; not only has the price per gallon gone up, but fishermen must travel farther to find productive waters where they can make decent catches. More than 50% of the Cameron population has picked up and moved away since 2000 due to a dizzying combination of economic troubles, increasingly extreme weather, and a newly unrecognizable landscape.
DeBarge shakes his head, eyes still glued to the horizon. He mutters that a normal person would have lost it by now. When asked what that makes him, DeBarge laughs.
“Well, I think I’m getting a little more normal every day.”