File Closed on Cabrillo Port: Governor
Sounds Death Knell
• Veto Sends Strong Environmental
Message to Future Energy Projects in the State
Local ocean advocates said they have
started planning “a really big party” after Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger nailed the coffin shut on a proposed
$1 billion liquefied natural gas terminal off the Malibu
coast Friday.
The governor’s veto ends a
contentious four-year battle over what would have been the
largest floating industrial facility along the California
coast, a controversy that brought Malibu celebrities, including
Pierce Brosnan, out to campaign against the project proposed by
Australian mining giant BHP Billiton.
Early this week, the Environmental
Protection Agency said it was halting its effort to determine
if BHP’s Cabrillo Port LNG terminal could get an
exemption from federal and state smog rules. “Our
recommendation has become moot,” an EPA official
concluded, as EPA closed the file on Cabrillo Port.
And, perhaps not coincidentally, a
competing firm that wants to unload LNG near Oxnard promised
last week to “voluntarily” meet the same Ventura
County smog laws that BHP said were impossible. That
announcement from Northern Star was quietly floated three days
before the governor had to make his decision on BHP’s
Cabrillo Port.
And reaction to that veto from Malibu to
Sacramento to Texas went along predictable lines, with coastal
advocates left jubilant.
“Three years ago, this looked like a
done deal, and that ship was a sure thing to be anchored off
the coast of Malibu,” said Malibu City Councilmember Andy
Stern who was out front in opposition to the project.
Shirley Godwin, an Oxnard organizer who
worked for four years against the project, said, “The
legal team and technical experts from the California Coastal
Protection Network and the Environmental Defense Center did
outstanding work.
“Our elected officials spoke out,
investigative reporters provided us with important
information,” Godwin said. “Numerous
organizations from throughout the west coast gave their
support. The residents studied the issues and wrote
letters, walked neighborhoods, made phone calls, and attended
many, many meetings.”
In Australia, a disappointed Resources
Minister Ian Macfarlane said that “not being
successful simply means we have more gas to sell in other
markets, probably at a higher price.”
He told the Australian Broadcasting
Company, “This decision means Australian LNG exporters
are able to pursue markets in Asia and India and in the Asia
Pacific rim,” he said.
“We’re thrilled, we’re
ecstatic,” said Susan Jordan, director of the California
Coastal Protection Network.
“We respect, but are disappointed by
the governor’s decision to disapprove Cabrillo
Port,” said Patrick Cassidy, BHP’s communications
director, from his Houston office. He said it was too early to
say what would happen to the handful of employees at the
company’s Oxnard office.
The proposed facility, a floating
aircraft-carrier-sized ship that was to be anchored 13.8 miles
off Leo Carrillo State Beach, was effectively stalled in April
by two independent state agencies. The governor’s action
Friday formally ended the application process and eliminated
any and all possibility of court review, no matter how unlikely
it is that a judicial challenge could have succeeded, opponents
said.
Schwarzenegger had voiced early support for
the Cabrillo Port plan, and Stern said his decision was
dramatic. “He obviously listened and respected the
opinions of the people along the coast,” Stern said.
“BHP always marketed this as an
Oxnard project, and didn’t ever mention that it was
closer to Malibu,” said CCPN’s Jordan. “I
want to single out the efforts of Pierce and Keely Brosnan for
really bringing this to the fore.”
The actor and his wife, an
environmental journalist, helped organize a
“paddle-out” at the Malibu Pier last fall that
attracted hundreds of Malibu residents and worldwide news
attention to the LNG battle.
In his veto message, the governor voiced
support for the concept of LNG imports into the state.
“But any LNG import facility must meet the strict
environmental standards California demands to continue to
improve our air quality, protect our coast, and preserve our
marine environment,” he wrote.
“The Cabrillo Port LNG project, as
designed, fails to meet that test,” Schwarzenegger
concluded.
Last April, the California State Lands
Commission held that Cabrillo Port would add more than 250
metric tons of greenhouse gas per year to the world’s
atmosphere, if the state counted the worldwide emissions caused
by compressing natural gas off the Australia coast and shipping
it across the Pacific.
“There has been a great change in the
Administration’s attitude towards LNG,” said
Jordan. “For the first time, we hear him talking about
worldwide greenhouse gas emissions caused by LNG
imports.”
Jordan said her group does not necessarily
oppose LNG imports, but has not been shown any need for a
foreign fuel that some industry analysts say is both more
expensive and more polluting than domestic natural gas
supplies.
Santa Barbara environmental attorney Linda
Krop said, “Both the commissions and the governor
realized that LNG is not a clean fuel and is not a bridge fuel
to help us until we come up with clean technologies.”
Cassidy said it was too early to say if BHP
would come back with a redesigned LNG terminal for the
lucrative California natural gas market. The company might have
made $50 billion over the next 40 years if it had won the race
to be the first LNG terminal in California waters, Australian
government officials had said.
More than 40 LNG import terminals are
being proposed around the nation, but given their great
expense, federal officials doubt that more than a few will
be built. BHP’s project was the only California LNG
terminal to complete the regulatory process, although the
Sempra Corporation is about 75 percent complete building
an LNG terminal for the California market in Ensenada,
Baja California.
BHP is partner with Woodside,
another natural gas company, in several Australian gas fields,
and Woodside is about to file its application to construct two
LNG unloading buoys at a site midway between Malibu and
Catalina Island. Cassidy said BHP and Woodside are also
jointly involved in many projects around the globe, but it
is too early to say if some sort of joint BHP-Woodside LNG
terminal here is in the works.
Industry analysts note that BHP’s gas
fields off Australia are far offshore, and that Woodside might
have to level an endangered coral reef to build its
Australian LNG gasification shipment harbor.
Two other firms are also planning to ask
permission to unload LNG offshore, one at an oil-drilling
platform in the ocean near Oxnard, and the other near some
existing offshore oil rigs off Huntington Beach.
In Sacramento, a spokesman for the
California Manufacturers and Technology
Association said he was pleased the governor came down in
favor of LNG imports in general.
“We appreciate that the governor
agrees that we need LNG as a part of our energy
portfolio,” said Gino DiCaro, the group’s
spokesperson. “While we are disappointed he did not
approve this project, we are confident that LNG is a safe
and clean alternative.”
