Who Will Make Final Decision on OceanWay LNG Proposal?

BY HANS LAETZ

Malibu residents were rankled last week by what they said were evasive answers from a City of Los Angeles official on who has the final say on the LNG terminal proposed for 21 miles off Point Dume.

The Los Angeles procedure is of key importance, as that city holds veto power over the Woodside Natural Gas proposal. But just how that power will be wielded by the city was not made clear last week, and may still be in flux, a City of L.A. official said.

Los Angeles project manager Linda Moore startled the Coast Guard official moderating the meeting when she turned down his request to explain L.A.’s decision-making chain of authority. “I would prefer not to,” Moore answered, as scattered catcalls arose from the audience.

“I can’t give you an answer to that question, it’s just too complex to describe,” she told some Malibu and Oxnard residents after the hearing. “I am not in a position to discuss every step of the project.”

Malibu residents, however, continued to press Moore about who at the City of Los Angeles will make the final determinations on the LNG project, which is six miles closer to Malibu than to L.A. “I would recommend that you ask that question in a letter to the docket,” she said, referring to the federal computerized list of public documents.

One Malibuite replied that the docket is basically an electronic file cabinet incapable of responding to inquiries and that questions about how the City of Los Angeles functions should be answered at what was billed as an informational meeting. But Moore said nothing.

Last Friday, a city spokesperson told the Malibu Surfside News that three separate autonomous commissions in Los Angeles would each vote on an aspect of the LNG proposal—with only one of those three decisions going on to the 15-member L.A. City Council for ratification.

The Board of Airport Commissioners will have to decide if the 36-inch-diameter, high-pressure pipeline will be allowed to be built across Los Angeles International Airport property, parallel to the controversial northern runways, which may be realigned soon for aircraft safety reasons.

The Recreation and Parks Commission will have to decide whether to allow the pipelines to cross 3.6 miles of city-owned ocean bottom, and be tunneled under public beaches near LAX.

Neither the Parks nor Airport Commission decisions need to go before the city council, the spokesperson said.

But the L.A. Transportation Commission will have to vote on whether to allow the 36-inch, high-pressure gas line to be buried beneath several miles of major streets north and east of LAX. That decision, under L.A.’s city charter, will have to be signed off on by the council, with L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa holding a veto power that can be overridden by a council supermajority.

Under federal energy laws, Malibu has no vote, even though it is the closest city to the proposed LNG terminal. Offshore LNG terminals are regulated by the federal government and the California State Lands Commission, but L.A. preempts the state in this case because the city holds property rights dating back to those granted by the King of Spain, before California became a state.