State Legislature Passes Landmark Pollution Bill While Assembly Panel Backs Off on LNG Needs Assessment

• Area Supervisor Urges Pulling Plug on Local Project
BY HANS LAETZ

California’s Legislature has passed a landmark greenhouse gas reduction bill, which may make it harder for an Australian company to locate a floating liquefied natural gas terminal off the Malibu coast, depending on how the new law is implemented, observers said.

The passage of California’s groundbreaking AB32 made headlines around the world, and comes in the same week that a proposed law to place all five proposed LNG terminals into a competitive licensing process died in Sacramento.

Also last week, Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky demanded that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pull the plug on BHP Billiton’s proposed LNG terminal off Malibu, on the grounds of heavy new pollution, risk of explosion, and the heavy toll it would take on the Malibu coast’s scenic beauty.

“It’s ridiculous for us to spend millions protecting and preserving the coast off Malibu, and then allow some company to just place an industrial use right in the middle of this scenic area,” Yaroslavsky said Friday.

In his letter, the county supervisor blasted an official study that said chances of an explosive fire would be limited to an area within 7.3 miles of the ship’s storage tanks. “(It) fails to evaluate the impact of a release of natural gas from all three LNG tanks simply because it deems that event ‘unlikely’,” his letter said.

“Given the fact that this facility would likely be a potential terrorism target, all worst case scenarios ... must be evaluated before 73 million gallons of LNG are located just offshore of the Malibu coastline.”

Yaroslavsky also said Cabrillo Port would be just as high, and 17 times longer, than the average oil platform in the Santa Barbara channel. “The presence of a permanently-fixed industrial fixture - even one that looks like a ship – is fully inconsistent with the natural vistas found off the Malibu coastline,” he wrote.

A BHP Billiton spokesman in Houston would not comment on extensive quotes from the Yaroslavsky letter that were emailed to him. “I can’t comment on this as the letter wasn’t directed to me or BHP Billiton, I don’t know the content, nor the full context of the remarks,” said Patrick Cassidy in an email.

Last week’s passage of the greenhouse gas bill in Sacramento has legislators, industry analysts and coastal advocates wondering how the Malibu LNG terminal could be affected.

The Cabrillo Port LNG terminal, 13.8 miles off the Malibu coast, would generate an amount of greenhouse gas and pollutants equal to as much as 5.9 percent of California’s current greenhouse gas discharges, according to a global climate expert who filed comments on behalf of the Environmental Defense Center’s effort to prevent the project from being built.

The California law, if signed by the governor, would require existing industries to roll back total greenhouse gas emissions to 1990s levels by the year 2012. The California Air Resources Board and Public Utilities Commission will have to draw up regulations to implement that, and one question is how LNG imports and their huge greenhouse gas costs will fit in.

“I’d be interested to see how this is all going to shake out,” said local Assemblymember Fran Pavley. “No one is going to be investing in a new coal plant, for example, if there are limits on carbon dioxide emissions.”

And since the new California law affects all energy sources delivering to state residents from out-of-state locations, AB 32 might require LNG importers to consider the entire worldwide LNG supply chain pollution issue, making them cost-prohibitive.

“I would predict that this bill will make energy costs in California much higher, and there may not be the political will to see that through” said Bill Cooper, executive director for the Center for LNG, a trade group in Washington.

“But it’s hard to tell at this early time, as the details of the implementation will be left to the Air Resources Board,” Cooper said. One possibility is that the advantages of a Cabrillo Port-sized LNG terminal, which could supply fuel for electricity for 3.4 million households, may cause less greenhouse emissions than other energy sources, making it a better solution in balance, he said.

The defeat of SB 426 in an Assembly committee last week means that the five LNG terminals being proposed for within 50 miles of Malibu will not face a needs assessment, or comparative evaluation to determine which is cleaner or safer, said Susan Jordan, executive director of the California Coastal Protection Network. And since the LNG plant near Malibu will emit considerably-more air pollution than other projects, that is bad news, she said.

 Both the BHP Billiton Cabrillo Port floating industrial terminal and the Mitsubishi SES proposal in Long Beach pose what I consider to be unacceptable impacts,” Jordan said.

In a related matter, the Malibu City Council next week will consider an ordinance renewing the municipality’s fight against Cabrillo Port.

Malibu has already contributed $50,000 to the group of lawyers and scientists opposing the project, and a community fundraising drive is attempting to match a $100,000 grant from Malibu Local Land Conservancy to pay for research and legal work to block state and federal permits for the $650 million BHPB terminal, which could be worth $40 billion in gas exports for Australia’s largest corporation.

A public fundraising event, featuring the free showing of the film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” is set for 7 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 15, at Malibu Bluffs Park.

Malibu’s new resolution notes that while LNG transport ships have a discharge-free record, LNG terminals do not, and that there have been 13 large accidents at LNG terminals in recent years.

Last week the EPA said it would soon release scientific comments by 12,000 California residents and associations, the vast majority of whom oppose an EPA permit for Cabrillo Port’s 270 tons of smog-causing chemical gas emissions.