Wrong Technology, Wrong Waters

According to public filings, Amigo LNG is proposed as a nearshore floating gas export facility near Guaymas, Sonora. Public filings have described different project configurations, including capacities ranging from 5.1 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) in the 2025 environmental filing to 7.8 mtpa in earlier export filings. The project would combine floating liquefaction barges with onshore storage tanks, pipelines, utilities, truck-loading facilities, and marine infrastructure for large LNG carriers. Filings indicate the project would rely primarily on gas sourced from the United States, with some potential use of Mexican supply. 

Public descriptions of the project have changed over time, including its footprint, timeline, and core design assumptions. In a 2025 filing to the U.S. Department of Energy, the developer said it had shifted to a new “compact” FLNG design that required additional engineering, safety reviews, regulatory consultation, and revisions to permitting and environmental filings. It also asked to delay the start of exports until 2029. Public records also leave key project details unresolved or undisclosed. In the project’s 2025 environmental filing, multiple maps and siting figures—including location and layout plans—were withheld as “reserved information,” limiting public visibility into the project’s exact configuration and footprint. That uncertainty is especially concerning because the current project promoters, LNG Alliance and Epcilon LNG, have not demonstrated a track record of building, permitting, or operating FLNG projects. 

Floating liquefaction combines the hazards of LNG processing with the challenges of operating heavy industrial systems at sea. Instead of placing liquefaction entirely on land, FLNG moves key industrial equipment onto permanently moored floating units. For Amigo LNG, that would not replace the already significant harms associated with LNG infrastructure—it would add new offshore risks on top of them. 

Those added risks are practical and serious: collisions involving large vessels, accidents during offshore loading, mooring failures, offshore power outages, invasive species spread through ship ballast water, and more difficult access for firefighters, medical responders, and repair crews when something goes wrong, especially during rough seas and storms. The result is a more failure-prone system operating in a harsher environment, with fewer recovery options during emergencies. 

Because Amigo LNG appears to be a shore-fed FLNG project, the most immediate risks are not offshore drilling accidents but failures in liquefaction, transfer, storage, or power systems. Those events can still trigger fires, explosions, or prolonged emergencies—especially offshore, where recovery is harder. Safety investigations into Shell’s Prelude FLNG show how power failures can quickly undermine emergency response and safe operating conditions. 

The climate impacts are significant as well. The International Energy Agency notes that across the LNG chain—from liquefaction to shipping to regasification (turning LNG back into gas for use)—major sources of emissions include the fuel burned to power these processes, methane leaks, flaring, and the high-energy intensity of cooling and transport. 

Marine harms are also well established. Environmental assessments for FLNG projects routinely identify underwater noise, heated water discharges, wastewater releases, vessel-strike risk, and invasive species carried in ballast water as standard impact categories requiring mitigation. Research shows that vessel noise can disrupt marine mammals through stress, masking of communication, and behavioral change. Studies of proposed FLNG development in enclosed marine systems have also found that noise, thermal discharge, water-quality impacts, and disturbance of breeding and feeding habitat may be intensified where water exchange is more limited. 

These impacts matter even more in the Gulf of California. In a semi-enclosed and biologically rich sea where water exchange is more limited and sensitive species are concentrated, industrial pressures do not simply disperse offshore. Repeated vessel traffic, noise, pollution, and disturbance can accumulate locally and intensify stress on already vulnerable ecosystems. 

Neither onshore LNG nor floating LNG is benign. But FLNG adds new offshore risks without eliminating the climate and environmental harms associated with long-lived polluting gas export infrastructure. The comparison below shows why that added burden makes this model especially ill-suited to the Gulf of California. 

Experience with floating LNG shows repeated problems with reliability and prolonged downtime, particularly when systems fail offshore, and recovery options are limited. The clearest example is Shell’s Prelude FLNG, which suffered a total power loss in December 2021 that disabled emergency response, safety systems, evacuation capability, and onboard living conditions, endangering workers. Regulators later issued additional safety notices after inspections identified unsafe practices that increased fire and explosion risk, and reporting shows that Prelude has spent hundreds of days shut down since entering service. 

Other FLNG projects point in the same direction. Gimi FLNG (located offshore Mauritania and Senegal) faced major delays. Altamira FLNG experienced start-up and repair-related disruptions. Exmar’s Tango FLNG became entangled in a force majeure dispute in Argentina. The pattern is consistent: Floating LNG is harder to operate and harder to fix. 

Taken together, these cases are not isolated mishaps. They show that floating LNG is harder to run, harder to repair, and more vulnerable to costly failures offshore. That is exactly the wrong model for the Gulf of California. 

In a confined and biologically rich sea like the Gulf of California—a globally recognized center of marine biodiversity—a technology with this record of outages, delays, and offshore failures poses risks that cannot be responsibly managed. That concern is heightened by the Gulf’s unique concentration of whales, fisheries, mangroves, and coral systems, where the consequences of prolonged disruption or accidents would be felt immediately and locally. 

The ecological case against Amigo LNG is overwhelming. The Gulf of California is internationally recognized for its Outstanding Universal Value, with UNESCO describing it as habitat for roughly one-third of the world’s marine mammals, extraordinary fish diversity, and globally important whale populations. It is this ecological concentration—not any single species alone—that makes the region uniquely vulnerable to industrialization. Introducing LNG export infrastructure, whether floating or onshore, into this setting would not create a discrete or isolated impact. It would add sustained industrial vessel traffic to a semi-enclosed, biologically dense sea, increasing pressure on migration corridors, feeding grounds, and interconnected habitats. 

Independent scientific assessments submitted in related proceedings have described cumulative impacts from repeated LNG carrier transits through narrow and biologically rich waters. Those findings are directly relevant to Amigo LNG. Large LNG tankers of the type expected to serve the project, moving regularly through confined marine corridors, can increase the risk of whale strikes, elevate chronic underwater noise, and introduce pollution pathways through routine discharges and ballast water exchange. As documented in NRDC and partner analysis on projects such as the canceled Vista Pacífico LNG and Saguaro LNG proposals, these pressures interact and reinforce one another, creating ecosystem-level risks that cannot be meaningfully mitigated, one project at a time. 

Even FLNG proponents’ own environmental assessments routinely identify underwater noise, invasive species spread through ballast water, heated water discharges from cooling systems, and vessel-collision risk as standard impact categories requiring mitigation. Amigo LNG’s environmental filing similarly presents mitigation measures for individual impacts. But the core problem is cumulative: Addressing risks one by one does not resolve the broader burden created by a large export terminal that’s dependent on repeated tanker traffic in an ecologically connected sea. 

The question, then, is not simply whether Amigo LNG can manage each impact on paper. It is whether this kind of fossil fuel export project belongs in a region valued for its ecological integrity, fisheries, tourism, and coastal livelihoods. It does not. Cleaner alternatives—including energy efficiency, renewables, and battery storage—can better support long-term prosperity without imposing new industrial risks on one of the world’s greatest living seas.  

Amigo LNG is designed primarily to export U.S. gas to overseas buyers, not to meet local energy needs in Sonora or strengthen Mexico’s energy security. Public filings indicate the project is aimed at shipping gas to Asian markets rather than serving local demand. That means coastal communities and marine ecosystems in the Gulf of California would bear the environmental and safety risks while much of the economic value flows elsewhere. 

People and communities deserve more than a project built around exporting fuel abroad while leaving local impacts behind. At a minimum, regulators should ask basic public interest questions: Who benefits, and who carries the burden? In the case of Amigo LNG, the answers should raise serious public interest concerns. 

Despite these unacceptable risks, Mexico’s hydrocarbons safety and environmental regulator, Agencia de Seguridad, Energía y Ambiente—which oversees LNG projects—continues its administrative review of the Amigo LNG project in 2026. Mexican civil society organizations have documented serious irregularities in the public consultation process, including delayed release of the environmental impact statement, a sharply limited comment period, and gaps in the information provided to affected communities. 

Meanwhile, a binational coalition has warned UNESCO, the Ramsar Convention, and the IUCN that LNG build-out in the Gulf of California threatens World Heritage and wetland values. The IUCN’s 2025 resolution explicitly urges Mexico and the United States to apply the precautionary principle and oppose LNG industrialization of the region. Although the public record is incomplete here, the ecosystem is globally exceptional, and the technology carries a documented record of outages and operational failures. Regulators must exercise precaution, and investors should beware the significant financial, regulatory, and reputational risks. 

The responsible path forward is clear: The Gulf of California is the wrong place for the production and transport of LNG. For Amigo LNG or any similar project, regulators must insist on full transparency, including public disclosure of final project plans, vessel traffic, discharges, and emergency scenarios. They should reject pressure to sideline long-standing Mexican and international commitments to protecting the Gulf and its exceptional marine ecosystem. Mexican authorities should prioritize grid reliability, efficiency, renewables, and storage over an export project that would lock in long-term marine risk while primarily serving overseas buyers. 

The Gulf of California is not a permitting obstacle. It is one of the world’s great living seas—and local communities have long fought to protect it from harmful industrial development, including LNG expansion. Their efforts reflect more than conservation ethics. They reflect a vision of lasting prosperity rooted in healthy fisheries, tourism, cultural heritage, and sustainable local economies. Those community-led and nature-positive pathways offer a far stronger foundation for the future than another risky fossil fuel export project. In support of our Mexican partners, NRDC is committed to advancing that future.