The California Superior Court in Los Angeles set a Feb. 11 hearing on Mitsubishi’s Sound Energy Solutions’ (SES) lawsuit seeking to force the Port of Long Beach to completed an unfinished environmental review of SES’s proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal in the Port of Long Beach. The latest court action came last Friday.

In January the Port of Long Beach Harbor Commission decided to terminate the environmental review and discontinue negotiations with SES on the final permitting of its proposed site. Other discussions between SES and city of Long Beach officials were also terminated at the time.

Even though more than a year will have elapsed since the SES court filing Feb. 7, CEO Tom Giles expressed no concern Monday and continued to maintain that the court will eventually put the onshore LNG project back on track to get a final joint environmental impact statement/report later in 2008. The document was originally expected by the end of 2006.

Even though it lost its joint venture partner in the project, ConocoPhillips, Mitsubishi is committed to pursuing the gas receiving terminal and providing LNG to run trucks and equipment in the greater Long Beach and Los Angeles harbors, which have ongoing projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s busiest port.

Some small stations currently provide LNG for use as a transportation fuel. SES would use one of these sources for LNG in the interim until whenever it can bring its terminal on line. From the beginning of its project proposal, SES has said some portion of LNG shipments at the terminal would not be regasified but would be sold as LNG specifically to serve the harbor.

SES is now concentrating on helping harbor operators convert equipment and vehicles to run on LNG in advance of it having a viable import project. Giles and SES have made no mention of any problems created by the departure of ConocoPhillips earlier this year (see Daily GPI, Dec. 14).

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