Paperwork for First of Two Area LNG Projects Accepted by the Feds

• Second Application to Follow Quickly

BY HANS LAETZ

Just four months after a liquefied natural gas terminal proposal off the local coast was shot down, the federal government Friday accepted an additional application for an area LNG terminal, and a second application will be accepted within 10 days.

NorthernStar Natural Gas had its lengthy application accepted by the U.S. Coast Guard and federal Maritime Administration to convert an inactive oil-drilling platform 30 miles west of Malibu into an LNG receiving terminal. That formal acceptance starts a 330-day clock that requires a massive environmental study to be conducted at the energy firm’s expense, but under government control.

Although that terminal would not be visible from Malibu, it would be upwind of the area. And close on its heels is a proposed terminal from Woodside Natural Gas that would be 22 miles off Point Dume, which also is expected to begin its 330-day clock very soon, industry officials say.

Joe Desmond, a vice president at NorthernStar, said, “It would be a very aggressive timetable” if the 330-day schedule for the proposed Clearwater Port project 12.6 miles off the Oxnard coast was met. Federal and state authorities have the power to stop the clock if additional security or scientific studies have to be undertaken.

The BHP Billiton proposal for Malibu was rejected in April after its clock was stopped for three years. NorthernStar’s Desmond said they have learned from BHP’s saga and submitted an application that he said “will deliver California energy that it needs while protecting the coast.”

The NorthernStar Clearwater Port proposal would emit 80 percent less air pollution during LNG processing than Cabrillo Port would have, because ambient air would be used instead of boilers to heat the minus 260-degree slush, Desmond said.

The NorthernStar terminal would also avoid stationing a permanently anchored storage facility at the platform. Two ships at a time could moor at the station, however.

Desmond said the NorthernStar proposal would comply with Ventura County air pollution rules, and would actually reduce net air emissions in the area because the company would retire existing pollution sources. It would not be visible from anywhere southeast of Port Hueneme.

Closer to Malibu, Woodside Natural gas expects to hear within 10 days on a similar acceptance of its application to build a terminal that would be visible from higher elevations in Malibu on clear days. Its project, called OceanWay, would be anchored approximately midway between Point Dume and Catalina Island.

OceanWay also hopes to take in incoming natural gas with a design that would use ambient air to heat the gas, but instead of putting its equipment on an old oil well, Woodside would reheat its gas on a pair of LNG carriers that would anchor at a pair of buoys in the middle of Santa Monica Bay.

The Woodside regasification carriers would loop out to the high seas more than 100 miles offshore, and accept loads of LNG from transoceanic carriers that would never touch U.S. waters.

Neither project sits well with some environmentalists, like Oxnard attorney Tim Riley, who is gearing up to battle an LNG terminal 13 miles west of his Oxnard Shores home.

“This is a guinea pig project that is going to be twice as close to Oxnard as the BHP Billiton one,” he said. “It will have two LNG tankers at it so it will be at least twice as dangerous, so we all need to team together as with BHP Billiton and work twice as hard.”

Riley noted that the old oil platform has reached the end of its design life, and was supposed to be removed from its prominent position on the sunset horizon in Ventura County. But Desmond said that state coastal laws encourage the reuse of older industrial intrusions on the coast whenever possible.

In 2004, the Malibu City Council passed a resolution opposing the BHP Billiton terminal, as well as the NorthernStar terminal off Oxnard.

Some environmentalists have voiced a wait-and-see attitude towards the two new proposals, given that many of the major environmental problems that sunk Cabrillo Port appear to have been addressed by the newcomers.

However, California Coastal Protection Network director Susan Jordan said the details in the multi-volume applications may vary from promises, and will need review.

Jordan was in Sacramento this week, seeking passage of a state law that would require a study on whether LNG imports are even needed.

The chairman of the California State Lands Commission, John Garamendi, said last week that the state’s demand for imported natural gas can be served by imports via a new LNG terminal nearing completion in Baja California.