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Unless state
acts, more showdowns will follow
By Timm Herdt
In each of the last
two years, a legislative proposal
that would have required state
regulators to conduct a sober,
public analysis of whether
California needs to import liquefied
natural gas has died an untimely
death in the final hours of the
lawmaking session.
Maybe after last
week, when the State Lands
Commission and the Coastal
Commission put an end to three years
of an Australian energy company's
drunken recklessness, legislators
will discover there's something to
be said for sobriety after all.
Rest assured that
just because two state regulatory
agencies said no to BHP Billiton's
proposal to construct an LNG
terminal 14 miles off the Oxnard
coast, the issue of importing
natural gas by tanker into
California is not going to go away.
BHP Billiton, having
invested three years and millions of
dollars, is likely not going to
abandon its proposal, even though it
would appear to have only a Hail
Mary chance of resurrecting its
project in the courts.
In addition, three
other energy companies have active
proposals in the works, including
one that seeks to convert an
existing oil platform off the
Ventura County coast to an LNG
terminal.
As it stands, the
proposal to convert Platform Grace
would be next in line to go through
the regulatory gauntlet. It is about
to get the go-ahead from federal
authorities to hire a consultant to
prepare its environmental impact
statement, and hearings to determine
the scope of that study could begin
this summer.
Proponents of the
Clearwater Port project watched
carefully last week as BHP
Billiton's proposal was rejected,
and listened to the reasons why.
Attorney Jeff Gorell,
the project's Ventura County
liaison, said the hearings provided
Clearwater executives "an
opportunity to learn and adjust our
project accordingly." For instance,
he said, the company will certainly
not dare go before a permitting
authority with a proposal that
flouts the Clean Air Act and
attempts to subvert the ability of
state regulators to control the
onshore air pollution created by its
project.
"We're a different
animal," Gorell said.
There are in fact
fundamental differences: The
Clearwater proposal uses existing
infrastructure, has an existing
pipeline route, would not store LNG,
and would use more environmentally
friendly technology to convert the
frozen fuel back to gas.
Another proposal, by
Woodside Energy, would employ even
less intrusive technology. It would
use tankers equipped with machinery
to convert the liquid to gas
onboard, and would offload the gas
into a submerged, flexible pipeline.
Using that technology, the process
would require no permanent, visible
infrastructure.
At this point,
California policymakers have two
choices. They can allow the other
LNG proposals to move along the
permitting process until they, too,
come to showdown votes of the Lands
Commission and Coastal Commission.
Or, they can create a front-end
system of review that ranks the
proposals based on which do the most
to increase the state's energy
supply, do the least harm to the
environment and do the best job of
ensuring public safety.
A bill to create
such a common-sense policy will
shortly be reintroduced by Sen. Joe
Simitian, D-Palo Alto, a gentleman
with an admirable supply of
perseverance. Two years ago, a
similar bill of his died
mysteriously after clerks failed to
walk it from one side of the Capitol
to the other just as lawmakers were
closing down for the year. Late last
summer, the same bill was killed in
a hastily called committee meeting
held on the last night of the
session.
This year, said
Susan Jordan, director of the
California Coastal Protection
Network, the legislative reception
might be friendlier.
Jordan and others in
the environmental community, notably
Linda Krop of Santa Barbara's
Environmental Defense Center, took
the lead in analyzing and critiquing
the BHP proposal. "Evaluating this
project took three years," she said.
"It's really not appropriate for the
burden for this level of review to
fall on the public."
Legislation to
require a statewide review would
start by requiring regulators to
openly address the fundamental
question of whether California needs
LNG. "It's never been done in the
context of an evidentiary hearing
process," she said. "This permitting
free-for-all is not in the best
interests of California."
Jordan is pleased
with the events of last week the
tough questions raised by Lt. Gov.
John Garamendi in the Lands
Commission hearing, "the leadership"
shown in voting to reject the BHP
proposal, the many public voices
that were raised and heard.
But she says there's
not much time to savor the victory.
Without legislation
to require a serious statewide
review, Jordan said, the ad hoc
battles over LNG will continue.
Now that the BHP
Billiton proposal has presumably
been put to rest, Jordan said it's
easy to guess what will happen next
with the other LNG proposals: "They
will aggressively move forward."
Timm Herdt is chief
of The Star state bureau. His e-mail
address is therdt@VenturaCountyStar.com. |
