Cabrillo Port Sails Past Detailed Security
Assessment Required for Other LNG Projects
A quirk in federal laws will send Cabrillo
Port out for a vote from federal and state regulators in a few
weeks without the highest-detail level of assessment of its
security, public safety and firefighting demands, a Coast Guard
official said Tuesday. The controversy over safety for
liquefied natural gas operations comes as a New York
congressman is charging that the Coast Guard may not be able to
handle its existing mission, much less the added burdens of a
fleet of new offshore LNG terminals.
A detailed study, called a “waterways
suitability assessment,” found that the Coast Guard would
need another ship and at least 48 more people to properly
protect Broadwater, a proposed floating regasification and
storage unit in Long Island Sound, New York. This planned LNG
ship is similar in function and design to the proposed
Cabrillo Port floating LNG terminal near Malibu.
Although the Coast Guard was required to
prepare and release a precise and detailed security analysis
for the LNG terminal proposed for New York, as well as one
proposed for Oregon, no similar waterways suitability analysis
is required under the different set of federal laws that cover
BHP Billiton’s Cabrillo Port LNG project proposed for
Malibu waters, said Coast Guard Cmdr. Mark Prescott.
A Coast Guard official said the agency will
not perform a detailed suitability analysis of Cabrillo
Port security and firefighting needs, including the
demands to be placed on local public safety agencies,
until after the plant gets its federal license.
“We certainly did a very robust
analysis for the environmental impact report’s risk
assessment,” Prescott said in a telephone interview
Tuesday. But that study, he acknowledged, was considerably-less
detailed than the Long Island Sound assessment last December.
“Whether the sector commander out
here is going to have to have additional boats or guardsmen on
duty out here is something we will determine after they (BHP
Billiton) have a license,” Prescott said. “That is
when we will be working with the sector commander to come up
with exact requirements.
The existing Cabrillo Port EIR has several
partially and totally blacked-out pages in its security
assessment, and is not nearly as detailed as the Broadwater
analysis. The Cabrillo EIR was heavily criticized last year,
the newest version will be released in a few weeks, officials
say.
Because Broadwater would sit within State
of New York waters, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is
in charge of it, and federal law requires a detailed Coast
Guard assessment. But Cabrillo Port sits outside
California waters, in Coast Guard jurisdiction, and the
federal laws do not require the Coast Guard to conduct the same
level of detailed security assessment that the very same agency
had to provide to federal, New York and Connecticut
officials.
“That’s just incredible,”
sputtered Susan Jordan, director of the California Coastal
Protection Network, when told of the differing Coast Guard
plans. “California gets discriminated against? Where
is the logic in that?
“You can’t say
‘we’ll tell the people if and how we can protect
them’ after you grant the license,” she said.
“They can’t be serious.”
Malibu city council member Andy Stern, a
frequently vocal LNG opponent, was incredulous.
“It’s one more in a series of outrageous actions
that the federal government has made in total disregard for the
health and safety of the residents of Oxnard and Malibu and Los
Angeles County.
The Broadwater report is a detailed,
168-page study that specifically spells out how many additional
Coast Guard crew, officers and ships will be needed to guard
the LNG terminal and the LNG carriers that will unload there.
It also says the company does not have responsibility to help
the Coast Guard or local governments pay for additional patrol
and fire vessels that would be needed.
But the report says the Coast Guard
“currently does not have the resources required to
implement the measures that have been identified as being
necessary to effectively manage the potential risk to
navigation safety and maritime security associated with
the Broadwater Energy proposal.”
The report says the Coast Guard would be
faced with “either curtailing current activities within
the Sector, reassigning resources from outside of the Sector,
or for the Coast Guard to seek additional resources through the
budget process.”
More than 40 LNG terminals have been
proposed along the nation’s coasts, and the Coast Guard
would bear the brunt of preventing terrorism or accidents at
all of them. Although no terrorist has ever struck an LNG
carrier, some security experts says the ships are likely
targets as they carry more combustible energy than a small
nuclear bomb.
A spokesman for BHP Billiton did not have
any reaction to the matter.
Congressman Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., has
demanded hearings into the Coast Guard’s ability to
protect floating LNG terminals in New England and the
California coasts.
Bishop represents an area along Long Island
Sound where Broadwater would be anchored. The New England LNG
terminal is attracting similar controversy to Cabrillo, with
the region’s Congressional delegation uniformly lined up
to oppose the energy import and storage ship.
“There are many unanswered questions
about what impact Broadwater and similar projects will have on
the Coast Guard’s limited resources,” Bishop
said. “As a member of the Coast Guard’s oversight
committee, I want answers.”
Nationally, the Coast Guard has been
hard-pressed to meet existing service goals due to a
modernization program that has had disastrous results.
Plans to remodel and lengthen several Coast
Guard cutters have resulted in hull cracks that have made some
cutters unsafe and unusable, and there are also major problems
with a new fleet of Coast Guard helicopters.
CAPTION 1., photo credit, MSN/Hans Laetz
REDACTIONS—Whole pages that address
security issues are blacked out in the Revised Draft
Environmental Impact Report.
