It’s only logical that advocates of property rights would be concerned about yet another proposal for a new LNG plant off of Malibu, because the underlying principal of homeowners’ rights is that the government should do no harm. That is exactly what they are doing by cavalierly allowing the Cabrillo LNG facility to practically write its own $1.5 million Environmental Impact Report and inexplicably conclude that the well-established standard blast radius estimate of 20 miles has been magically reduced to 1.5 miles.
Are we going to see another whitewash with the proposed Crystal Energy LNG plant planned for an ancient oil platform off the coast of Oxnard that would be closer to our city than even the Cabrillo plant? After talking with many people in Malibu I’ve learned that most residents have never heard of the Crystal Energy LNG terminal plan. They need to be alerted that the Grace platform being proposed is an operating oil transfer station that has the ability to be recommissioned as an oil rig. There is a much greater catastrophic potential in using an oil platform to simultaneously process nearly 550 million cubic feet per day of highly explosive liquid natural gas. Because of the days it takes for a ship to off-load natural gas, what the proposal really means is that ships containing billions of cubic feet of LNG will be made into a ticking time bomb by virtue of their permanent location on an active oil transfer station off our coast.
I encourage every person in Malibu to write letters to the governor and the State Lands Commission urging them to find a safer location for an LNG facility. After all, if the state is considering making the waters off Malibu a marine reserve and limiting fishing, the least they could do is to be consistent and not dump a fantastically hazardous new plant right off our shores.
Anne Hoffman