A contentious $1 billion plan to ship Australian natural gas in liquid form to California and store it on a terminal off the coast between Oxnard and Malibu is up for a final vote in Santa Barbara on Thursday, even as Congress widens an inquiry into the politics of the project.
BHP Billiton LLC, the world’s largest mining company, is pitching Cabrillo Port as a safe, clean, reliable energy source for California, one of the largest economies in the world.
The state presently imports 85 percent of its natural gas supplies from other states and Canada. The California Energy Commission has said that California needs to diversify to meet future demand.
Billiton officials say Cabrillo Port (see map below) could supply well over 10 percent of the state's current demand for natural gas for the next 40 years. They’re calling it a “bridge fuel” to a time, 10 or 20 years from now, when solar and wind power and other renewable energy sources can take over.
 Cabrillo Port would be the first liquefied natural gas terminal off the California coast. Image courtesy of BHP Billiton LLC.
"Natural gas provides cleaner energy while we’re transitioning to renewables. It is the cleanest-burning and most environmentally-friendly fossil fuel and it’s prized for that.”
But project opponents, led by the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center and California Coastal Protection Network, say the Cabrillo Port terminal would be dangerous, polluting, harmful to whales and potentially as dirty as coal, if the tankers hauling gas use diesel fuel.
California, the critics say, should focus on the top energy priorities it has already set — conservation, efficiency and renewable power from the sun and the wind.
“This project is the antithesis of what we want the future to be,” said Susan Jordan, coastal network director. “We don’t want a massive floating factory terminal three football fields long and 14 stories high, operating 24 hours a day off the California coast.
"There’s nothing else like this on the coastline. It could continue to operate well beyond 40 years, just as we’ve seen with the oil rigs.”
Liquefied natural gas is essentially the same gas used in homes and business, except that it is chilled to 260 degrees below zero and converted to liquid form, then shipped by tankers across the ocean in huge thermos-like tanks. A tanker would arrive once or twice a week at the Cabrillo Port project to unload liquefied natural gas into three large storage tanks on the offshore terminal.
The liquefied gas would then be warmed up and converted back to its gaseous state, then pumped through an underwater pipeline onto land and into the pipeline distribution system of the Southern California Gas Co. The proposal states that the project would have a lifetime of 40 years, but there is no expiration date.
On Monday, the State Lands Commission will hold a hearing on Cabrillo Port in the Performing Arts Center in Oxnard, beginning at 10 a.m. State Lands must decide whether to certify the 3,000-page environmental report on the project and lease state waters to Billiton.
On Thursday in Santa Barbara, the California Coastal Commission will decide whether Cabrillo Port complies with the state’s Coastal Zone Management Act. The meeting will begin at 9 a.m. at Fess Parker’s DoubleTree Resort Hotel.
The Coastal Commission staff is recommending a “no” vote, saying the project would worsen air pollution and spew several million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere yearly, contributing to global warming.
“It would not be in the public welfare to approve such a project,” the staff report states.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has the final say and he must make a decision by May 21. In the past, Schwarzenegger has expressed support for importing liquefied natural gas to power the state’s electric plants, saying that Oxnard was his “personal preference” for a location.
Most recently, though, Schwarzenegger said he had not made up his mind and would wait for the review to be completed. Two other proposals to bring in liquefied natural gas are pending off Ventura and Los Angeles counties.
CONGRESS ASKS QUESTIONS
If Cabrillo Port is approved, it would be the first liquefied natural gas terminal off the California coast. But after three years of review, its fate in the final stretch appears uncertain.
This year, prompted by the Environmental Defense Center; Coastal Protection Network; Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, and U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform launched an inquiry to find out why the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, reversed itself on the air quality rules for the Cabrillo Port project.
The EPA initially said Billiton would have to abide by the tough rules of the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District, then changed its mind and exempted the project.
According to the Coastal Commission staff report, the Cabrillo Port project would spew more than 200 tons of smog-producing pollutants into the air every year. The wind would blow those pollutants onshore, worsening the air quality in both Los Angeles and Ventura counties, the report says.
Ventura air district officials say that a project such as Billiton would normally have to “offset” its pollution by replacing dozens of large diesel-burning engines on land with clean engines powered by electricity. Ventura County is out of compliance with the federal standard for ozone, a colorless gas that causes nausea and shortness of breath.
In a March 30 letter to the EPA, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, the new chairman of the House oversight committee, stated that the agency reversed its position “after intervention from a political appointee, Jeff Holmstead, assistant administrator for Air and Radiation, who may have been acting after consultation with the White House.”
Waxman said the agency’s reversal on Cabrillo Port was “likely to result in degraded air quality in California.” He requested more documentation of EPA conversations and e-mails.
In another letter the same day, Waxman asked Billiton officials to turn over any documents of discussions they had had with the White House or with EPA officials in Washington, D.C.
The EPA has not yet issued an air quality permit for the Cabrillo Port project. Last week, officials did not respond to a reporter’s specific e-mailed questions about the Waxman inquiry, but sent a statement saying that the EPA was cooperating with his request.
“EPA is committed to protecting public health and the environment, while increasing our domestic energy supplies by developing alternative and renewable sources of energy, like liquefied natural gas,” stated Jessica Emond, the EPA deputy press secretary.
Billiton officials say they have aggressively lowered potential air pollution from their project, in part by pledging to use natural gas instead of diesel fuel to power their tankers in California waters.
In addition, the company says it will retrofit two diesel-fueled tugboats with cleaner-burning engines. The boats travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Cleaner engines in the two tugs would remove 116 tons of pollutants yearly, according to the environmental report — but coastal areas outside Ventura and Los Angeles counties would get most of the benefits.
In part because of their concern for public health, the city councils of Port Hueneme, Oxnard and Malibu, along with the Oxnard School District board and Oxnard PTA Council oppose Cabrillo Port.
Port Hueneme Mayor Maricela Morales says smog produced by the project would affect the health of the children and seniors who represent 40 percent of her city’s population.
“How can you call 200 tons of pollution environmentally safe?” she asked. “It’s a reckless proposal. It is put together not by industry standards, but by buying influence.”
Part II on Monday: The long memory of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill leads some to cheer, others to abhor the new energy source from Down Under.
 Map by Mary Koenig / SBN |
