With a new budget finally put in place in California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger turned his attention to energy issues but got off to a rocky start last Monday with a news report quoting local government officials, environmental groups and consumer activists blasting the governor’s cabinet members for taking an 11-day trip with energy company executives to Australia and South Korea to visit liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities.

Paid for by a San Francisco-based energy/environmental foundation, the 14-member delegation was headed by companies proposing to build LNG receiving terminals along the Pacific Coast of California and North Baja California, Mexico. Members of Schwarzenegger’s administration included his resources secretary, state EPA chief, the governor’s cabinet secretary, and the deputy resources secretary for energy.

Energy companies represented on the trip included Australian-based BHP Billiton, Calpine Corp., ChevronTexaco, Sempra Energy, Shell, and Southern California Edison Co.

Critics denounced the “unbelievable” access that the trip afforded the energy companies to influence state decision-makers, according to a report in Monday’s Los Angeles Times.

“If this was an important policy trip, the governor should have had the state pay for it, and they didn’t need to stay at the Four Seasons hotel,” said Doug Heller, executive director of the Santa Monica, CA-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, as quoted in the LA Times report.

Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman called the trip (in mid-July) “a great primer” on LNG, and an official with the Natural Resources Defense Council and board member of the foundation paying for the trip, Ralph Cavanagh, defended the trip as “valuable,” pointing out that the state in its current fiscal crisis has no funds for such a trip.

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