Anti-LNG Forces Rally for Smog Agency Meeting Next Week

• BHP Billiton Spokesperson Says Misinformation Is Contributing to Bias Against Project

BY HANS LAETZ

Malibu activists are hoping that next week’s meeting of a little-known Ventura County smog agency may be the first step in fighting an Australian company’s plans to anchor an aircraft-carrier-sized ship permanently in the seas west of Point Dume.

Meanwhile, BHP Billiton has signaled to investors and world financial markets that its proposed $800 million liquefied natural gas terminal off Malibu will further overshoot its goal of securing permits and environmental reviews, and said malicious misinformation may be being spread about Cabrillo Port.

Coastal Advocates, the group organized to oppose a proposed Liquefied Natural Gas terminal off Malibu’s coast, is urging its members to travel to Ventura Tuesday to testify about what they say is a misuse of Ventura Air Pollution Control District smog rules by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

California Coastal Protection Network director Susan Jordan told Malibu LNG activists that “in the face of our successful efforts, BHP is going on the offensive. What we have here are two Ventura County supervisors who agree with our longstanding position that the EPA should not have reversed their [earlier] decision.”

The EPA is responsible for enforcing local smog rules at offshore port projects. Last year, after getting heavy pressure from White House energy officials and BHPB lobbyists, the EPA reversed its stand on the LNG terminal’s smog permits.

The EPA officials relieved Cabrillo Port of the tightest air regulations by interpreting local smog maps as placing Cabrillo Port in the Channel Islands air basin. Had the factory ship and its 270 tons per year of smog-producing emissions been considered onshore, BHPB would have had to buy and retire 150 percent of that smog generation ashore in Ventura County.

At Tuesday’s hearing, the smog agency is being asked by some of its members to say the new EPA interpretation is wrong, and ask that “new source review” requirements from the onshore smog basin be used. Those restrictions are so stringent they may make construction of Cabrillo Port impossible, coastal activists said.

The board is made up of the five Ventura County supervisors, and the mayors of the five largest cities in the county. It will meet at 11 a.m. Tuesday at the Ventura County Hall of Administration, 800 S. Victoria Ave., Ventura.

BHP Billiton officials told financial reporters in Australia last week that their target for securing environmental review permits for Cabrillo Port has again been moved back to early 2007.

Kathi Hann, BHPB’s Oxnard spokesperson, told Australian reporters that recent demonstrations in Malibu were “Not In My Back Yard,” or NIMBY, protests. “If these protesters were really concerned about the environment, they would be going to protests in Long Beach and Baja California and everywhere else where projects like ours are being proposed,” Hann was quoted by a Bloomberg reporter in Sydney.

BHP Billiton’s chief spokesperson in Houston, Patrick Cassidy, told the Malibu Surfside News, “A lot of erroneous, misinformation about Cabrillo Port is out in the public, and this is contributing to the negative attitude some people have about the project.” Cassidy said he is not sure if the misinformation is “innocent because of the project’s complexity, or it’s malicious because of project opponents and competitors.”

In an e-mail, Cassidy said “while much discussion has been carried on about engineering processes, facilities, or locations, the crux of the issue is whether or not Californians want to ensure the supply of natural gas for their economy into the mid- and long-term future.”

The company has also for the first time acknowledged local news reports that the project will be referred to the California Coastal Commission, even if it secures construction permits from the California State Lands Commission in the current process. That further delay will push back Cabrillo Port from getting to the governor’s office for a final yes-no decision into next spring, some observers said.

Late last week, the Coastal Commission added Cabrillo Port to its agenda for its January 10-12 session in Long Beach. When the Cabrillo Port LNG terminal off Malibu was first proposed in 2003, federal officials said the permitting process would be fast-tracked and a final decision would be reached by spring of 2005.

But the application derailed when the Coast Guard said it could not process the application due to more than 120 unanswered questions about the project. State officials are also seeking answers for the 1400 specific critical comments filed by the public last summer when the project’s second Environmental Impact Report went up for review.

Substantive questions about the project must be sent to the company for response, and those responses must be evaluated, a state official said.

California State Lands Commission officials have said intense local opposition, coupled with unanswered questions about the project, have delayed the EIR permitting process until at least the end of this year, and possibly longer.

The fast-track clock will be restarted, officials said, after the EIR questions are answered. That federal-state fast-track clock was supposed to take 330 days, but is stretching into its third year as the company conducts additional research.

The so-called “data gap” questions involve major new sources of smog, ship collisions, impacts on whales and fish, earthquake dangers, and the process for drilling two pipes across 22 miles of undersea wildlife habitat off Point Mugu.

“In Malibu, you have a community that frankly doesn’t want anything within eyeshot of their coastline,” Michael Zenker, senior director of North American gas research Cambridge Energy Research Associates, told Bloomberg. “From that standpoint, the Cabrillo Port project is a particular challenge.”