Please have Tony York in Sacramento be your guest reporter on the previous, present and likely relationships between BHP, Sempra and other LNG port applicants and the Governor’s office. A great starting point is Los Angeles Times article on Sept. 3 exposing further some of the political deal making and dangers of the proposed BHP LNG port off Los Angeles County Line Beach and Leo Carrillo State Beach.
If BHP’s LNG port and ships are so environmentally clean as they contend, why have the Prime Minister of Australia lobby President Bush to pressure the EPA into re-defining Anacapa Island as the port’s smog impact area? It is north and west of the BHP LNG port, well outside of the directions of the prevailing winds which would carry BHP’s smog into Ventura and Los Angeles Counties.
Why has BHP spent over $2.4 million dollars to lobby the California Legislature and Governor Schwarzenegger to rush through an approval of the LNG port without a California Energy Commission needs assessment? The enabling legislation SB 426 was blocked this week in the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee despite the Los Angeles Times editorial favoring its passage.
Why? Australia’s BHP through their Malaysia gas leases, ships and port stand to make billions of dollar from us as rate-payers. They don’t want us to realize the many bad consequences to our health, environmental and foreign policy from importing their LNG.
Is the Governor going to allow BHP to send smog to visitors at our National, State and County beaches and the Santa Monica Mountains National Park? Are we to risk having a BHP LNG terrorist action or industrial accident like the recent one in Jordan?
We have an excess of natural gas in Texas, Colorado and Wyoming. What we need are additional natural gas pipelines and storage bringing domestic natural gas to California. That natural gas will not create smog like LNG does with BHP’s re-gasification technology. Those underground pipelines can be better defended from terrorists. United States labor will receive more work on their construction and maintenance than having BHP or other foreign companies hand out some short-term subcontracts.
Governor Schwarzenegger should not cave in to supporting the BHP LNG port because of intense lobbying from BHP.
Jeff Harris