LOS ARRECIFES, Mexico -- The sun has set and the clouds are washed in purple as Mauricio Contreras and his daughter Eunices head out to fish in the Gulf of Mexico.Eunices casts the heavy net for snapper, pollock or cabrilla while her father pilots their small boat.Contreras, an anchor dangling from a silver chain against his deeply tanned skin, has been doing this for more than 40 years.
But he worries the family's main source of income is now at risk from an underwater pipeline completed last year to import natural gas from the United States.“When they started laying it, it affected us because the boats were dropping explosives and you could hear it all the way here, right on the shore,” Contreras recalls.
Now that it's operational, he worries about leaks: “It’s a constant danger that will always be there, and it’s a risk for the entire fishing industry.”The pipeline known as Southeast Gateway was built by Canadian company TC Energy in partnership with Mexico’s state-owned power company CFE.It adds 700 kilometers (435 miles) to a line that now stretches from southern Texas to Tabasco state, where it's supplying electricity for a major oil refinery.
But its main goal is to someday deliver gas to the Yucatan Peninsula when the expansion of another pipeline is completed.Southeast Gateway is part of a wave of projects that would allow Mexico, already the world's single largest buyer of U.S.gas, to bring in even more for its own use and to re-export to Asia and Europe.
But that faces growing resistance from communities and environmental groups who say the strategy increases use of a polluting fossil fuel, deepens dependence on the U.S.and puts Mexico's climate commitments at risk.More than 40,000 people across Veracruz make their living from the sea, including Contreras, who lives in a community where fishing is almost the only work.
He joined residents of 15 coastal communities last year in a lawsuit over the pipeline that was dismissed, but is under...