Battle Brewing Over Gas Facilities

When Tim Riley gazes out at the Santa Barbara Channel, he sees doomsday just over the horizon. An Oxnard attorney concerned about two proposals for offshore liquefied natural gas facilities, Riley runs an anti-LNG website with illustrations of his city being incinerated beneath a blanket of flame.

“I started researching this stuff, and it horrified me,” he said. “I don’t want my community to be a potential Chernobyl.”

But when Steve Meheen looks out over the same waters, he sees a small slice of California’s salvation, a way to secure cheaper energy and save the environment at the same time. Managing one of the projects, Meheen lauds natural gas as a cleaner-burning alternative to other fuels and a lot safer than its critics say.

“We all use it,” he noted with exasperation. “Los Angeles County schools use it in some of their buses. If it’s so horrendously dangerous, would a school district put a big tank of it beneath kids on a bus?”

Both men are players in a high-stakes drama that has emerged from the coastal fog. With the federal government beating the drum for more LNG imports, four projects are being proposed along the California coast. One is in Long Beach and another on the shore of Humboldt Bay in Northern California.

The other two are miles offshore in the waters that lap Ventura County and Malibu -- a big plus for safety, their developers say.

For some activists, though, the distance is not enough. They look back to 1977, when public outrage killed an onshore LNG facility proposed for either the Port of Los Angeles, Oxnard or northern Santa Barbara County.

In the decades since, the profitability of LNG waned. Companies lost interest in finding overseas supplies and overcoming bitter local opposition to coastal terminals.

Now, increasing demand and rising prices are causing a nationwide scramble for more LNG plants. Some 30 proposals are vying for approval nationally, plus four off Baja California.

Eleven miles off Oxnard, an all-but-abandoned oil platform would get new life as a spot for supertankers from Alaska to unload their liquid cargo of natural gas. A plant aboard Platform Grace would convert the chilled fluid back into gaseous form, shooting the vapor through a pipeline that would hit land at Reliant Energy’s Mandalay Bay power plant and proceed several miles to gas lines inland.

The $300-million undertaking is proposed by Crystal Energy, a private Houston-based firm that was set up specifically for the project.

Twenty-one miles off Oxnard, a giant Australian minerals company wants to build a similar plant on a new floating platform to be anchored to the seabed 2,900 feet below. Its undersea pipeline would connect with existing lines at Reliant’s power plant on Ormond Beach.

Developer BHP Billiton would spend about $500 million on construction before shipping natural gas from its reserves in Australia.

On paper, the idea behind both projects seems simple. Natural gas -- which powers most California power plants and heats many homes -- takes up 600 times less space when it’s turned from a vapor into a liquid. Converting natural gas requires chilling it to minus 259 degrees Fahrenheit.

In both projects, ships carrying massive tanks of the chilled liquid would dock at the offshore terminals. The liquid would then be transferred from the ships, turned back into a gas and sent ashore into a web of pipelines that serve the entire region.

Both companies, whose projects could be operational in four years, say they want to fill an urgent energy gap. They point to rocketing gas prices, to California’s energy crisis and to competition from other states for dwindling natural-gas supplies within the U.S.

“You’re seeing a real recognition that we need to do something in the very near term or we’ll be faced with serious problems,” said Crystal spokeswoman Lisa Palmer.

But that kind of pitch doesn’t play well with many Oxnard residents who heard it years ago.

“They keep saying everything’s different -- but the issues are the same,” said Jane Tolmach, who was a City Council member for eight years in the 1970s. “The laws of physics haven’t changed.”

In 1977, Tolmach helped defeat an onshore LNG terminal proposed for Ormond Beach. She said developers tried to assuage residents’ fears. At City Hall, they mounted a demonstration, complete with a vapor cloud, to show how benign an LNG spill could be.

“It was such a minor little nothing,” Tolmach recalls. “They put some dry ice in a glass of water and said: ‘See? That’s what would happen!’ ”

But an environmental report commissioned by the city painted a grim picture. Its worst-case scenario envisioned a full tanker accidentally spilling its LNG into the Santa Barbara Channel. The result: a fiery cloud 30 miles long that would burn to death some 70,000 Ventura County residents.

That example is horrific -- but inaccurate, according to Jerry Havens, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Arkansas and a consultant for government agencies on the siting of LNG facilities.

Havens, an expert in the behavior of gases, has expressed concerns about placing LNG terminals in populated areas. But offshore sites, he thinks, could be safe.

“If you’re talking 10 miles offshore, I’m not aware of any risk to the public that would extend that far,” he said.

A fiery cloud drifting over Oxnard would be “extremely unlikely” because a mix of LNG and air would almost certainly disperse the LNG, making it harmless, he said.

If a terrorist were to blast an LNG tanker, it would go up in flames, Havens said. But the LNG would burn itself out on the surface of the water, posing no risk to shoreline residents.

Havens said research done since 1977 suggests that LNG clouds aren’t as dangerous as initially thought.

For some residents, such reassurances ring hollow. LNG critics bring up a 1944 explosion that killed 128 people in downtown Cleveland. Just two months ago, a blast at an Algerian LNG plant killed 27.

But those are aberrations, industry officials say. Four onshore LNG facilities operate safely in the U.S. Worldwide, LNG tankers have made 33,000 trips without a single shipboard death.

Still, Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez is wary. He says the local coastline, with its naval base and commercial harbor, would make an attractive terrorist target.

“If terrorists want to make a statement,” he said, “this would be a place to do it.”

Lopez, a City Council member for 25 years, also questioned the companies’ motives in trying to locate off of blue-collar Oxnard. “Look at where your freeways, your polluting industries, your airports are located,” he said. “They’re in places that politically are not as sophisticated as others.”

The accusation rankles Meheen, who said the offshore site was chosen because of its proximity to coastal gas lines.

“Why on earth does Oxnard say we’re picking on them?” he asked. “We’re even closer to Malibu.”

The closest landfall to the BHP project would be 14 miles from the Neptune’s Net fish restaurant on Highway 1, near Malibu’s northern tip.

So far, the projects haven’t stirred much comment in the environmentally conscious beach city.

“They haven’t hit the radar screen yet,” said Malibu City Councilman Jeff Jennings. “But I’m sure when they do, they probably will be opposed.”

Whether local governments could halt the projects is unclear.

Under federal law, that authority rests with the governor. But before the proposals reach his desk, they must negotiate a slew of regulatory agencies. Because the facilities would be in federal waters, the Coast Guard must approve them, but the State Lands Commission must OK the pipelines when they cross into the state’s seabed three miles offshore.

“We haven’t even seen an LNG proposal since the mid-1970s,” said Claudia Chandler, a spokeswoman for the California Energy Commission. “The permitting process is like alphabet soup right now.”

While the bureaucrats sketch out a review process that could last years, the companies counsel patience. They say they will work out anti-terrorism measures with the Coast Guard. Meanwhile, they invite the public to informational meetings like those BHP will hold March 15 in Oxnard and March 16 in Malibu.

“We have a thorough and measured and exhaustive environmental review process,” said Crystal Energy’s Palmer. “All the questions about safety and security are going to be addressed.”

But activists like Tolmach are not suffering the wait gladly.

She carries petitions and often sports a bright-green anti-LNG pin.

“We’ll kill it,” she vowed.

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LNG Proposals

Two firms propose offshore liquid natural gas terminals.

Cabrillo Deepwater Port

Company: Australian-based BHP Billiton

Project location: 14 miles offshore.

Type facility: Floating terminal, similar to a barge

Capacity: 1.5 billion cubic feet per day

Cost: $500 million

Operation: If permit approved, 2008

Website: www.LNGsolutions.com

Crystal Clearwater Port

Company: Houston-based Crystal Energy

Project location: 11 miles offshore

Type facility: Converted oil platform

Capacity: 1 billion cubic feet per day

Cost: $300 million

Operation: If permit approved, 2007

Website: www.crystalenergyllc.com.

BHP has scheduled informational meetings for the public from noon to 3 p.m. on March 15 at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center and from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. on March 16 at Malibu High School.

Los Angeles Times