Pointing to three offshore proposals as better options, the newly elected mayor of Long Beach, CA, reiterated his opposition to siting a liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal in his city’s harbor in a published interview with the nonprofit, Alliance to Save Energy. He predicted the city council would consider the proposed LNG port site before the end of the year.

The retired president of Southern California Edison Co.and now mayor, Robert Foster, said he agreed that California needs “additional and diverse” sources of natural gas, but LNG could be better handled in remote locations away from population centers. Long Beach, with nearly a half million residents located 20 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, is the fifth largest city in California.

“I don’t believe Long Beach is an appropriate place for such a facility,” Foster told the Alliance’s newsletter. “There are at least three offshore proposals [in Southern California] for new LNG terminals — and these proposals would serve the same purpose of increasing the natural gas supply while posing much less risk to a dense urban area.”

Delayed recently, a joint final environmental impact report is expected in November from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Port of Long Beach. In the meantime, the city’s municipal energy department, including a city-run gas distribution utility operation, is negotiating with the proposed port terminal’s backers — Mitsubishi and ConocoPhillips — for potential supplies and a pipeline interconnection to the receiving terminal.

The plant developers have a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for a 25-acre site in Long Beach Harbor to build a receiving terminal for processing up to 700 MMcf/d of LNG. The MOU essentially outlined the terms of a lease of the property from the port if the permitting process is successfully completed.

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