New Report Says ‘No’ to Any LNG
Terminals in California
• Authors Stress Lack of Need,
Pollution Impact and Continued Reliance on Imports
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.”
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.
