Royal Dutch/Shell Group and ChevronTexaco Corp. were identified Tuesday as potentially joining the huge Australian-based mining/resources firm, BHP Billiton in the latter’s plans for the world’s first floating offshore LNG receiving terminal about 21 miles from Oxnard, CA, a coastal town 50 miles west of Los Angeles.

Speculation on the other global energy firms, both of which have more experience in LNG and natural gas generally than the Melbourne-based BHP Billiton, was raised by a Hong Kong-based energy analyst in a Bloomberg business news report. Billiton had said last month it will look at potential partners once it has the major state and federal approvals in the United States. The firm is in the very early stages of seeking such permits, particularly in California, although with the gubernatorial change in the state, the proposal may get more consideration.

(Gov.-elect Schwarzenegger in his brief web-based campaign platform indicated that LNG should be looked at seriously.)

Both Shell and Chevron/Texaco have separate plans to build LNG receiving facilities along the Pacific Coast in North Baja, Mexico. And Shell recently received a second federal permit in Mexico to build a receiving terminal on the eastern Gulf-of-Mexico coast near existing and proposed government-developed gas-fired electric generation plants.

The two producers are among a half-dozen partners in an Australian Northwest Shelf liquefied natural gas (LNG) production facility with an interest in marketing Australian LNG in an increasingly competitive global market. The Australian partners will want to get some of their product into the West Coast of North America in what could develop into a glutted market in 10 years. Shell has projected that the number of LNG projects may double to 32 by 2012.

While BHP Billiton’s CEO Phillip Aiken has been quoted as saying gaining the state permits may take about a year, it is not clear that the offshore proposal, banking on BHP’s expertise in constructing and operating offshore oil platforms, can move that fast even in a state with a new, free-market-oriented governor.

Within hours after BHP Billiton’s formal announcement last August about its proposed offshore terminal 21 miles off the Southern California coast, residents and community activists in Oxnard were already protesting the proposal. Local environmentalists and elected officials defeated another LNG proposal from Occidental Petroleum Co. last year, and the Australian firm already has hired a Los Angeles-based public affairs firm to help counter local opposition.

In contrast, an onshore proposal in the busy Long Beach Harbor by an affiliate of the giant Japanese industrial company Mitsubishi has drawn few protests and completed a preliminary joint environmental plan “scoping meeting” with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staff last week.

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