Three More SoCal LNG Projects Work Their Way through System

BY HANS LAETZ

The apparent scuttling of the proposed BHP Billiton ship off Malibu’s northern end does not end the local concern about liquefied natural gas terminals in nearby waters.

Another Australian energy firm, Woodside, is expected to file its application soon to locate an LNG terminal 22 miles south of Point Dume. And two other companies are poised to apply for offshore LNG regasification projects near Oxnard and Long Beach.

The lead agency handling the Woodside application will be the City of Los Angeles, because its natural gas pipeline would come ashore near Los Angeles International Airport. That means the L.A. City Council will have veto power on the project that is being marketed as OceanWay.

There are several key differences between the Woodside and Billiton proposals, and company officials have said they watched Cabrillo Port’s opponents and tried to design a project that environmentalists may find more acceptable.

OceanWay, unlike Cabrillo Port, would use outside air to warm the cryogenically chilled LNG. Woodside officials say that will eliminate 90 percent of the smog that the BHP project would have generated, and would also eliminate the floating aircraft-carrier-sized terminal that would have been stationed off the Malibu coast for up to 40 years.

OceanWay would use a permanent submerged buoy that would rise up to access LNG carriers from below, and regasify the liquid on board the transit vessels.

Woodside officials say that OceanWay would be located 22 miles off the nearest mainland, at Point Dume, and about 20 miles from Catalina Island. The curvature of the earth would obscure the LNG carriers from all but high elevations in Malibu.

Of more concern to Ventura County residents, Northern Star Natural Gas is also readying its application to convert a 40-year-old oil-drilling platform into an LNG terminal. That company also plans to use ambient air regasification, to lessen the smog impact as compared to Cabrillo.

But environmental activists note the oil rig project, being marketed as “Clearwater Port,” is just 12.6 miles off the beachfront houses at Oxnard, and add that a new Congressional study places into doubt existing computer projections about the impact of an LNG fire on open water.

A third project, proposed by Tidelands Natural Gas of Texas, would locate a submerged buoy similar to the Woodside project somewhere offshore San Pedro.

All of these proposals need environmental review, and BHP Billiton went through four years of study, hearings and controversy before a decision was reached.

In the meantime, momentum may be building in the California Legislature for a comparative licensing procedure that would also assess whether the state really needs more imported fossil fuels.

State Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, has said that this year’s bill will be more thorough than one that almost passed last year.