WSJ: How the Rockefellers and Billionaire Donors Pressured Biden on LNG Exports

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Charities controlled by members of the Rockefeller family and billionaire donors were key funders of a successful campaign to pressure President Biden to pause new approvals of liquefied natural gas exports from the U.S. 

The Rockefellers, along with other wealthy donors including the philanthropy of Michael Bloomberg, have provided millions of dollars in recent years to front-line environmental groups that are campaigning against fossil-fuel projects, including LNG terminals that have been proposed on the Gulf Coast, according to people familiar with the effort. 

Some green funders hadn’t given much attention to the LNG exports until recently, in part because of ambivalence about the role natural gas should play in the energy transition. Plus, some previous campaigns to kill LNG terminals had been unsuccessful, damping some donors’ and large environmental organizations’ appetite for taking on the industry.

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The initiative dispatched scouts to the Gulf Coast, where several facilities crank out LNG, and developers plan to build at least a dozen more. They met with front-line leaders opposed to the projects, and started making grants to their organizations. 

Among them was Roishetta Ozane, a single mom of six from Sulphur, La., who has emerged as one of the campaign’s foremost voices. The environmental-justice activist had for years been trying to alert large environmental groups about a fossil-fuel expansion in southwestern Louisiana, largely in vain, she said. 

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