Pecan Island SpaceX facility?

It now appears that Louisiana’s governor Jeff Landry is planning a big event next week when, according to anonymous sources, he will announce the purchase by SpaceX of that 130K acre plot of land presently owned by Exxon and near the unincorporated village of Pecan Island on the state’s south coast.

Gov. Jeff Landry is inviting hundreds of Louisiana elected officials and business leaders to Abbeville next week to announce that Elon Musk’s company SpaceX is planning to build a multibillion-dollar spaceport on a roughly 18-mile stretch of the coast about 45 miles southwest of Lafayette. An invitation, sent via email by the governor’s office and Louisiana Economic Development on Wednesday, said Landry and LED Secretary Susan Bourgeois “cordially invite you to join them in announcing a defining moment for Louisiana’s future.”

The event is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Tuesday [August 25] in Abbeville, the Vermilion Parish seat and the closest city to the site of the planned spaceport.

The invitation didn’t mention SpaceX by name and Landry’s office declined to comment, but sources familiar with the deal said the subject of the announcement is the SpaceX project.

I have speculated that this announcement would not occur until early September, because SpaceX wanted to wait until after the August 31st end date for the comment period on the FAA’s new policy exempting rocket companies from most major environmental laws. It appears Landry and SpaceX have decided that August 25th is close enough to that end date, a decision that probably took place in discussions last week when Musk’s private jet as well as another SpaceX airplane visited Louisiana for one day. They probably decided there was no longer any point in waiting, as the news is largely public knowledge now.

This decision was also probably influenced by a decision by a federal judge on August 18, 2026 to dismiss a lawsuit that had been hanging over the Exxon property.