A panel of federal judges has decided to withdraw its decision around a Texas air permit for Sempra Infrastructure’s Port Arthur LNG export project southeast of Houston.

In November, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated an air permit granted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). In that decision, the circuit court sided with a local environmental group’s argument that the agency did not mandate the same pollution controls as other Texas projects, including Rio Grande LNG in South Texas.

However, in the court’s latest order filed earlier this month, the justices wrote that the question boils down to the interpretation of the state’s environmental statutes, which should be answered by the Texas Supreme Court (No. 22-60556).

“This...