Malibu is on Big Oil’s hit list. And Big Oil thinks you have nothing to say about it. Our governor and the State Lands Commission quite possibly are already lobbied into willing complicity. It was spelled out in bright lights at the April 18 Commission hearing that supposedly was to check out our views on BP Billiton plans to build Osama bin Laden’s dream target and environmentalists’ worst nightmare just off our coast.
The hearing was a cynical hijacking of our democratic process. It wasn’t a town meeting; it was a hold-up. Of the first 30 speakers, 25 were BP Billiton assigns, identifiable immediately by the their suits and ties or by the glazed robotic stares of professionals who had their rote message down pat.
It was over an hour into the meeting before Malibu got its say. Those who spoke for us did so eloquently. The three State Land Commission members there knew perfectly well BP Billiton’s side of it. They had been fully indoctrinated, conceivably over sumptuous meals, by the army of lobbyists Billiton (read Big Oil) has had working on this for years.
The commissioners knew the Billiton front guys were there for the clearly defined purpose of shutting Malibu up (and maybe down,) gagging us with the filibuster tactic at our lone chance to voice our concerns. They used their time to lie that their seagoing facilities never break loose. In the later hours when it was finally turned over to them, Malibu speakers pointed out that during Hurricane Katrina, part of BP Billiton’s rust belt in the Gulf of Mexico tore away and sailed off on a tour of the U.S. Gulf coast. The Gulf Coast has its hurricanes and the California Coast has its earthquakes and, yes, even tsunamis. The Billiton troops also lied that LNG terminals never go BOOM, but an LNG terminal had blown up much of an Algerian port city only a few years back, the most recent such incident.
It is up to our governor and our State Land Commission representatives to stop this travesty now. This is the last moment that we or our government or our courts will have anything to say about it. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the State Lands Commission have to say “no” and to say no now. To fail to do so would be nothing less than treason against the environmental and safety needs of Californians.
Some observers warn that the six billion cubic feet of gas that will be compacted and stored in Billiton’s proposed 10,000,000 cubic feet 14-stories high construction would actually go off with a bang many times the force of Hiroshima.
Here’s the real reason it will be 14 miles out. That thing will not be in the USA. It will be in international waters. Any litigation you or Malibu or California or even the United States might ever wish to initiate to mitigate oil leaks or environmental disaster or, perhaps, reconstruction of an entire blown-up Malibu coast, would have to be carried out in Australian courts. Good luck!
A Los Angeles Times series of articles well documented the close connection of many of Governor Schwarzenegger’s close advisors and allies to BP Billiton. If our state’s chief decider really does cave in and give this dreadful idea a green light, we might want to name it Schwarzenegger’s Swindle or something similarly evocative. That would have an effect on his legacy when Schwarzenegger’s Swindle fouls the waters or explodes (either by terrorist intercession or simple incompetence as it was in Algeria) and takes some of us with it.
Dick Guttman