Even in the midst of a brewing international oil crisis and the state’s skyrocketing gasoline prices at the pump, Californians are expanding their organized opposition to proposed offshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals along the state’s southern Pacific Coast. Hoping to head off the ground swell, One proponent already has scheduled community information meetings later this month in Oxnard and Malibu, CA, the onshore entry point for a terminal 22 miles offshore.

Some local elected officials and community activists who helped oppose an onshore receiving terminal in their community more than a quarter of a century ago are getting reactivated now, according to a report Sunday in the Los Angeles Times. A former Oxnard city council member of eight years back in the late 1970s vowed in the news coverage to “kill” the two current proposals for offshore sites. The former council member last rallied decades ago when a joint venture of Southern California Gas Co. and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. proposed to bring in LNG at an onshore site close to one of the coastal natural gas-fired electric generation plants now owned by Houston-based Reliant Energy,

Both Austrailian mining/energy giant BHP Billiton, and Houston-based Crystal Energy have separate offshore proposals. Billiton wants to use its expertise in ocean floor bottom-anchored floating oil platforms to build a floating LNG receiving terminal 21-miles off Oxnard and pipe the energy in gaseous state to shore using existing pipeline corridors. Crystal Energy, a privately held firm created to develop the second project, proposes to use an existing idle oil platform (“Platform Grace”) and convert it into a LNG receiving facility less than 20 miles from the Oxnard pipelines.

While proponents stress the growing need for LNG imports to meet North America’s projected future sagging gas production, opponents are fixed on perceptions of safety risks, real or imagined. The LA Times‘ report quoted industry LNG expert Jerry Havens, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Arkansas, who has some reservations about siting terminals onshore in populated areas, but thinks offshore sites “could be safe.” Havens also noted that research completed since 1977 on so-called “LNG vapor clouds” indicate they aren’t as dangerous as once thought, according to the news report.

The jurisdictional aspects of both on- and offshore sites are being looked at, and no one is sure if local governments have an ultimate veto on these proposals. Offshore proponents so far are going to the California State Lands Commission and the U. S. Coast Guard with their preliminary applications.

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