Work on a draft environmental review of Australia-based Woodside Natural Gas’ liquefied natural gas (LNG) project offshore Southern California has been suspended by the U.S. Coast Guard, pending the completion of a global lifecycle assessment of the greenhouse gas (GHG) impact of the proposed ship-to-ship transfer and regasification process 28 miles offshore.

The diversion is the first of this scope in the LNG siting process, looking at the project’s GHG footprint all the way from the extraction of the gas in Australia through the shipping to Southern California and the offloading and undersea pipeline 28 miles to the burnertip onshore. Also in the final report resulting from this analysis will be comparisons with lifecycles for similar amounts of energy from other sources domestically — U.S. pipeline supplies, coal and maybe even renewables, according to Woodside.

Late summer or early fall is now the target for when the draft environmental documents will be released and the public hearing process begins.

Woodside originally filed with the Coast Guard for a deepwater port permit last August, and last September federal and Los Angeles city authorities officially launched a full environmental impact review process, which was halted last December, according to a Santa Monica, CA-based Woodside spokesperson who said the company made no announcement on the interruption of the permitting process timing.

The Coast Guard put out a small public notice on the change, but Woodside considered the move “a small procedural change,” according to the spokesperson. The company and Coast Guard have issued requests for proposals from independent consultants that can do the work, and the agency and company are determining the scope of the work, which will be done for the Coast Guard and paid for by Woodside. An outside panel of experts will review the methodology and scope of the project before it is actually done.

“Hopefully this can turn into a model for how other companies do this in the future,” said Woodside’s spokesperson, adding that California GHG rules under its 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) have not been established yet. He said Sydney, Australia-based energy industry consultant WorleyParsons has been selected to head the work as an extension of earlier GHG assessment work it was doing for Woodside’s Australian gas production operations.

A holder of large portions of Australian North Shelf gas supplies, Woodside has proposed an offshore LNG ship-based docking facility and undersea pipeline 28 miles from an onshore connection point near Los Angeles International Airport. The Coast Guard and city jointly deemed as “complete” the application for Woodside’s OceanWay project, triggering the environmental work last fall.

An environmental scoping hearing was held in October by the Coast Guard and city. Last fall’s action started what Woodside at the time called “a comprehensive public review and approval process” in which the Coast Guard serves as the lead agency under the National Environmental Policy Act, and Los Angeles acts as the lead agency under the California Environmental Quality Act (see Daily GPI, Sept. 6, 2007).

There is no new timeline for developing the draft environmental impact assessment. Woodside’s spokesperson estimated it would take “a few more months” to compile all of the GHG lifecycle data and study methodology. “Then the work will actually be incorporated into the other draft environment impact report/statement. It is something we anticipated, so it has been incorporated into our timetable. We’re not changing our timetable yet, and I don’t think that we will.”

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