(CN) - A group of nonprofit environmental organizations led by the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Trump administration Monday, seeking to reverse the approval of the country's first offshore export facility for liquified natural gas (LNG). 

The U.S. Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration (MARAD) approved the project in March, allowing Delfin LNG LLC to build and operate a deepwater port facility approximately 40 miles off the coast of Cameron Parish, Louisiana. According to exhibits attached to Monday's complaint, MARAD actually denied Delfin's application as recently as April 2024, citing "widespread changes" to the project's ownership, design, financing and operations since initial proposals in 2017. 

But the plaintiffs claim President Donald Trump enabled the project's approval in January by issuing an executive order to "unleash America's affordable and reliable energy and natural resources." MARAD has since reversed course, claiming the project has been reviewed and approved by more than 15 federal agencies. 

The plaintiffs further claim - under the Administrative Procedures Act and Deepwater Port Act - that the government failed to fully assess the project's climate and environmental harms. In a related news release, the Center for Biological Diversity said the project is not in the national interest, as it would encourage additional fossil fuel development on shore, while causing long-term effects to the offshore environment and species. 

"It's outrageous that the Trump administration fast-tracked this project with no review of serious environmental risks," Lauren Parker, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute, said in a statement. "Nothing about this project is in the public interest, from increases in consumer costs to public health harms. We're in an affordability crisis, a climate crisis and an extinction crisis and this project will make all three worse. The law demands that this project be stopped."

The Sierra Club, another plaintiff in the case, cited another 2024 court order critical of federal procedures for evaluating how endangered species in the gulf should be protected from offshore oil and gas facilities. Of particular concern is the critically endangered rice whale, of which only around 50 are estimated to exist. There are also several species of endangered sea turtles, sharks, fish, mollusks and corals in the gulf. 

"Without proper review and public engagement, the Trump administration has refused to consider the impacts of this project on frontline communities of the Gulf, endangered whales, rare turtles, and vital Gulf of Mexico ecosystems," Sierra Club senior attorney Devorah Ancel said in a statement. "We look forward to bringing these voices to the forefront of the fight against this catastrophic project."

Separately in 2024, when the project was known as Commonwealth LNG, a D.C. Circuit panel ordered the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to revisit its approval of the application, finding it failed to properly analyze the environmental effects. In that case, some of the same plaintiffs claimed the facility would produce some 100 million tons of carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emissions annually, increasing the state's total emissions by 1.7%.

The plaintiffs also claimed the project would disproportionately affect low income minority communities where cancer rates already exceed the national average. 

Delfin LNG did not immediately return a request for comment, but according to an April 2025 news release, the company seeks to make "minimal additional infrastructure investment to support up to three floating LNG vessels producing up to 13 million tonnes of LNG annually."

CEO Dudley Poston praised Trump's support, noting the permit "had been delayed under the prior administration." 

"The Delfin floating LNG project has the potential to be not just the first LNG export deepwater port facility in the United States, but a significant economic contributor and job creator over the long term," Poston said. 

Monday's lawsuit was filed in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which will review whether MARAD's decision violated statutory requirements or was inadequately reasoned.  

Source: Courthouse News Service