Opinion: LNG may be DOA in California

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With the plan to build a liquefied natural gas terminal in Long Beach all but dead, the other front-runner on the LNG front may be on life support as well. On Monday, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) sent a scathing letter to Environmental Protection Agency chief Stephen Johnson that accused the agency of bowing to political pressure and misleading the public by backing BHP Billiton’s proposed floating LNG terminal off the coast of Oxnard.

In 2004, EPA staff repeatedly opined that BHP would have to comply with Ventura County clean-air rules that require new polluters to buy credits to offset their emissions. For BHP, this was a deal-breaker: All those big LNG tankers would blast so much pollution into the air that there probably aren’t enough credits available in Ventura County to offset it all. BHP has spent a great deal of money lobbying politicians and the Bush administration on this issue, and it may be that in June 2005 it paid off. The EPA sent a letter to the Coast Guard saying that ‘based on our further analysis of the Deepwater Port Act and the district rules,’ the BHP project would be exempt from county clean-air regulations.

Waxman, who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, requested the details of that analysis, yet there is no evidence that it was ever performed. Instead, Waxman presents evidence that the EPA staff was overruled by a political appointee. Waxman is demanding full documentation of the EPA’s decision-making on the BHP project, and with Democrats now in control of the House, he’s in a position to cause some serious trouble for the agency, not to mention BHP.

Why does any of this matter? Because natural gas is a comparatively clean fuel, and it’s likely to get more expensive in California unless we can come up with more efficient ways to import it. It’s not easy to get such projects approved in California’s regulatory environment, though, and so the response from the big energy companies seems to be to do everything possible to subvert it. The Long Beach project collapsed amid evidence that its environmental study tried to whitewash the safety questions about building a terminal for a highly flammable gas so close to a major city. The BHP project is in trouble because of an apparent attempt to sidestep clean-air regulations.

Here’s a thought: Why not try playing by the rules? It’s hard to believe that there is no place in California to build an LNG terminal while complying with safety and environmental regulations, or no way to clean up LNG tankers so they emit less toxins. Everybody would benefit from a clean, safe LNG terminal; the energy giants just need to find a way to build one, and stop trying to put one over on the public.