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Offshore "Factory" Debate Echoes Past |
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By Melinda Burns
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Monday, April 09 2007 |
Californians’ long memory of the disastrous Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969 has made many residents wary of the $1 billion Cabrillo Port plan to import liquefied natural gas to a “floating factory” 14 miles offshore of Oxnard.
Many Santa Barbara County residents also recall the plan in the late 1970s to build a liquefied natural gas terminal on land at Point Conception, an area viewed as sacred by the Chumash Indians. The Chumash staged a yearlong protest encampment on the point. Ultimately, the project was withdrawn because a glut of natural gas on the domestic market rendered it uneconomical.
“It’s the same thing all over again now,” said Linda Krop, chief attorney for the Environmental Defense Center, who leads the opposition to Cabrillo Port along with her client, the Santa Barbara-based Coastal Protection Network. “The industry was saying back then all the lights were going to go off if we didn’t import liquefied natural gas. It didn’t happen then and it won’t happen now.”
Supporters say that importing liquefied natural gas simply makes sense, since the public is reluctant to support new oil drilling and the price of gasoline has risen to more than $3.00 per gallon. Besides, they say, California is the sixth largest economy in the world and will need new sources of energy to keep growing.
“We either do this or we go nuclear,” said Alex Rodriguez, a Santa Barbaran who serves on the California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce board and works as a consultant for Billiton, helping the company conduct outreach to labor groups.
 The Cabrillo Port proposal will be heard today by the State Lands Commission. Image Courtesy of BHP Billiton LLC.
“What other options do we have? I’m a hard-core environmentalist and a hard-core liberal, but the more I looked into this project, the more it made sense. Working families need a reliable source of energy. Nobody wants coal. We don’t want to pump any more oil out of the ground.”
As proposed, BHP Billiton LLC would build a floating terminal offshore between Oxnard and Malibu and supply it with liquefied natural gas from Australia. On board the terminal, the liquid would be warmed up and converted back into a gas, then shipped onshore by pipeline to homes and businesses in Southern California.
The Cabrillo Port proposal will be heard today by the State Lands Commission in the Performing Arts Center in Oxnard, beginning at 10 a.m. Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, is slated to speak against the project early in the hearing.
On Thursday, the California Coastal Commission, meeting in Santa Barbara, will decide whether the project complies with the state’s Coastal Zone Management Act. The hearing will begin at 9 a.m. at Fess Parker’s DoubleTree Resort Hotel.
The Coastal Commission staff has recommended a “no” vote, saying that Cabrillo Port would violate state policies governing clean air and the risk of hazardous spills.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has until May 21 to approve or reject the project. In the past, he has said he was a “big believer” in liquefied natural gas because the demand for natural gas is expected to outpace traditional supplies. California imports 85 percent of its natural gas from other states and Canada.
But the Santa Barbara-based Community Environmental Council says California doesn’t need liquefied natural gas. Conservation and efficiency could curb future demand, and the power plants that now run on natural gas in California — half of the plants in the state — could run instead on wind, solar and geothermal power, the group says.
The state Legislature is already considering a bill that would require a third of the state’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2020. The present mandate is 20 percent renewables by 2010.
“People assume that liquefied natural gas is as clean as natural gas,” said Tam Hunt, the council’s energy manager. “But when you add in the travel from overseas, and the conversion into a liquid and back into a gas, then it can be as bad as coal.”
There are presently five liquefied natural gas terminals operating in the U.S., located along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, out of 40 projects worldwide. Besides Cabrillo Port, two other proposals are pending to bring liquefied natural gas to California — one at Platform Grace off Oxnard, and one offshore of Los Angeles County. A proposal for a onshore terminal in the Port of Long Beach died in January after it failed to win the city council’s support, largely because of safety concerns.
Liquid natural gas cannot explode, but if it spills into the ocean, it can warm up and turn into a vapor cloud. According to the environmental report on the Cabrillo Port project, if just two of the three storage tanks ruptured in a terrorist attack, a vapor cloud seven miles long could catch on fire, encompassing the shipping lane nearest to shore.
Kathi Hann, Billiton’s environmental advisor, counters that in 45 years of worldwide operations, there has never been a major accident associated with a liquefied natural gas tanker, and not a single explosion or fatality.
“The LNG shipping industry is one of the safest in the world,” she said.
Hann said an off-limits safety zone would be created around the Cabrillo Port terminal to keep out boaters and fishermen. Billiton also is prepared to take other measures to reduce environmental impacts, she said. As listed in the environmental report, these would include using monitors to watch for marine mammals that might by disturbed by loud noise, and donating $300,000 toward seabird habitat restoration to make up for any harm done to birds by the terminal’s bright night lights.
But project opponents, including the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council; celebrities such as Jean Michel-Cousteau, the ocean explorer, and Pierce Brosnan, the actor; SEIU Local 721 and a number of Latino groups, including Centro Mujer and El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, say the project would do far more harm than good.
Some Latinos have taken note that the onshsore gas pipeline from Cabrillo Port would pass by two of the poorest mobile home parks in Ventura County.
“It has really galvanized this community,” said Carmen Ramirez of Oxnard, the vice-president of the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, a group that represents poor and Latino residents. “I believe BHP Billiton put this project here because they felt that this working class, immigrant, Spanish-speaking community was going to be intimidated and let it happen. But I believe we will convince the decision-makers that this is a terrible idea.”
In an effort to garner support in the community where it hopes to operate, Billiton has donated more than $250,000 to non-profit groups in Ventura and Los Angeles counties, hosting gala dinners for such organizations as the American Red Cross and Destino: The Hispanic Legacy Fund. The company sends a newsletter to 1,000 residents and groups and has held a dozen informational house parties in private homes, entitled, “Cooking with Gas,” and “Good Things Come from Australia.”
Cabrillo Port supporters include numerous chambers of commerce, farm bureaus, growers’ associations, taxpayers’ associations and business and manufacturing groups, including the Southern California Gas Co. The 3,000-member Tri-Counties Building and Trades Council, which is headquartered in Santa Barbara, recently endorsed the project. Cabrillo Port would create several hundred local jobs.
The Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association and County of Santa Barbara Industrial Association have not taken a position on Cabrillo Port, but they generally favor importing liquefied natural gas, said Joe Armendariz, executive director of both groups.
“We’re not building new refineries for oil or gas,” Armendariz said. “California voters who have shown themselves to be hypersensitive to environmental issues, particularly when it comes to oil, are going to have to recognize that California’s economy is dependent on energy.”
Melinda Burns can be reached at
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 Map by Mary Koenig / SBN |
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