New Report Says ‘No’ to Any LNG Terminals in California

• Authors Stress Lack of Need, Pollution Impact and Continued Reliance on Imports

BY ANNE SOBLE

Opposition strategy against liquefied natural gas terminals off the Southern California coast is no longer one of a terminal by terminal attack but a full-fledged war on whether any LNG terminals should be built at all, following a report that contends that the fuel is not needed, pollutes too much, and undermines the push for energy renewables.
The 40-page report issued by the Bay Area environmental group Pacific Environment is expected to become the “little red book” of growing ranks of critics of the piecemeal LNG terminal approval process and the fuel’s role in California’s future energy policy.
Co-authors of the report, PE’s Rory Cox, who was an outspoken critic of the BHP Billiton LNG project rejected last year, and Robert Freehling of the group Local Power, say the addition of even one more LNG facility would “shackle the state to a new dependence on polluting fossil fuels.”
They state that in a time of strong popular support for public action to combat global warming, California should not pursue “policies that will squander billions of dollars on importing LNG from overseas and prevent any meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.”
The authors emphasize that the “staggering investment costs” of an LNG facility call for 20 year- or-longer contracts. The report contends that this costly infrastructure “will heighten [the state’s] dependence on foreign fossil fuels for at least another generation [and] contradicts California’s environmental priorities.”
The authors say there is adequate natural gas in North America to meet the state’s needs “for the next several decades,” and say “this fuel burns cleaner and is more reliable than imported LNG.”
They accuse the energy industry of “false scare tactics” to create an unsubstantiated fear of energy shortfalls, while it downplays LNG’s “much higher environmental, financial, national security, and public safety risks.”
The report directly and indirectly deals with the policy implications of what public administration studies dub the “revolving door” principle, that individuals who work for or are appointed to agencies that regulate energy are often hired by the very companies they formerly regulated.
LNG companies with terminal proposals for the West Coast include a number of former key regulatory commission personnel and players, resulting in management rosters that read like a virtual energy “Who’s Who.”
COMPANIES RESPOND
Representatives of companies with LNG proposals off the Southern California coast were quick to criticize the PE report.
Steve Larson, the president of Woodside Energy, whose Ocean-Way project is in the approval pipeline, told the Malibu Surfside News, “This one-sided extremist kind of comment does little to address the serious dialogue that decision makers need to hear.”
Larson seconded comments by Joe Desmond of NorthernStar, the firm seeking to reactivate an aging oil platform in Ventura County for an LNG terminal, that “the radical position put forth by the authors...is flawed [and] would result in another energy crisis.”
But most LNG observers expect the report to be important ammunition in the skirmishes underway in California and Oregon, the other coastal state dealing with multiple LNG applications.
Instead of looking at LNG proposals one by one, communities, such as Malibu, are now urged to develop a West Coast perspective when they ask questions about project need and costs.
This is an approach that many critics of the one-by-one, or divide-and-conquer, policy process have sought from the beginning.