|
Wow! What a great start to the New Year. With all the organizations finding fault with
the DEIS report NorthernStar has a lot
to do. Here are the ones I know of:
Pipeline Safety Trust, United State Department of the Interiors , Port of Vancouver,
National Grange,
Department of Ecology, and Riverkeeper for a lot of people.
Governor
ups ante against LNG sites
Energy - A letter tells federal regulators to back off and calls into question the quality
of their reviews
Friday, February 15, 2008
TED SICKINGER
The Oregonian
Gov. Ted Kulongoski insisted Thursday that federal regulators halt all reviews of proposals to build liquefied-natural-gas
terminals in Oregon until they study all alternatives for supplying natural gas to the region.
In a letter sent Thursday to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Joseph Kelliher, Kulongoski said he had
asked the state attorney general to examine Oregon's legal authority to refuse state permits for the projects until FERC complies
with his request.
Kulongoski also told Kelliher he had asked Oregon's congressional delegation to enact legislation that would wrest
back state control for licensing LNG facilities. State authority was preempted by the federal government as part of the Energy
Policy Act of 2005.
The governor's new posture, outlined Thursday in an interview with The Oregonian, marks a bold departure from his wait-and-see,
open-minded approach that has accompanied debate and review of the gas-importing terminals for years.
From the outset, the LNG proposals have stirred controversy.
Some in rural communities welcome the jobs and taxes they would generate. Other residents scorn the potential damage
to the Columbia estuary and decry the likely use of eminent domain to seize farmland, vineyards and forest for hundreds of
miles of pipeline.
Kulongoski told Kelliher he wasn't "unalterably opposed" to LNG being part of Oregon's energy mix. But he said FERC's
"approach to the licensing of plants and pipelines has created a crisis of confidence with Oregonians."
Opponents of the projects cheered Kulongoski's moves. They have been appalled by FERC's style of regulating the terminals
-- an extension, they say, of a laissez-faire approach of the Bush administration.
"This is just the type of leadership we want to see the governor take on this issue," said Brent Foster, executive
director of Columbia Riverkeeper. "It's encouraging that he's recognizing that these LNG projects deserve a very close look,
and it's important that the rush to approve these projects not leave us with a mistake."
The governor's new stance puts Oregon in league with states across the country that have raised objections to FERC's
permitting approach and its preemption of state licensing authority.
"Ultimately, we may end up in court over this," Kulongoski said in the Thursday interview. "We're not exactly clawless.
. . . The state doesn't have all the tools, but we are a critical piece. You're going to have to meet the state concerns."
Energy companies have proposed building three LNG terminals in the state: one in Coos Bay and two on the Columbia River.
The terminals would accept imports of supercooled natural gas from abroad, reheat the liquid into a gas, and ship the gas
to West Coast markets through one of four proposed pipelines.
Two other companies have proposed building pipelines to ship domestic natural gas from the Wyoming Rockies to southern
Oregon.
Project proponents say Oregon needs to diversify its natural-gas supply to offset potential price spikes as regional
demand rises and, as they contend will happen, Canadian imports or domestic supplies go into decline.
The Northwest Gas Association projects that natural gas demand will grow 2 percent annually
during the next five years, driven primarily by higher need for electricity generation and growing residential use.
"The Northwest's need for additional natural gas is well documented," said William "Si" Garrett, chief executive of
NorthernStar Natural Gas Inc., in an e-mail statement. NorthernStar wants to build the Bradwood Landing terminal 20 miles
upriver from Astoria on the Columbia River. Bradwood is expecting a decision from FERC -- its first on any of the Oregon proposals
-- in the spring or early summer. The company says nine studies in the past two years have shown a need to boost the region's
gas supply.
Industrial gas users and the gas industry's regional trade group said Thursday that the federal government does not
need to analyze the region's gas needs and how best to meet them. No company would build a facility that wasn't needed and
fully subscribed, they contend.
"I'm not sure the government is as well-equipped as the market to determine which facility is most efficient and cost-effective
at meeting the region's needs," said Dan Kirschner, executive director of the Northwest Gas Association.
Kulongoski, however, said the regional need for gas, and which facility would best meet that need, are "threshold questions."
Each of the proposed LNG and Rockies pipelines could import far more gas than Oregon uses. Opponents long have contended
that project backers want to use Oregon as a back door to California, which already has spurned several efforts to locate
LNG terminals there.
Oregon state agencies, meanwhile, have complained that FERC's environmental review of Bradwood was inadequate and that
it had abdicated its responsibility to thoroughly evaluate alternatives.
Some of Kulongoski's Democratic colleagues, including Secretary of State Bill Bradbury and Oregon House Speaker Jeff
Merkley, have opposed the terminals. Bradbury, in particular, is wary of seeing the state tie its energy future to an imported
fossil fuel with higher greenhouse emissions than domestic natural gas.
In his letter, Kulongoski asked that FERC's review of alternatives include a full analysis of carbon emissions along
LNG's path from source to market, including liquefication overseas, trans-ocean shipping and re-gasification here. The analysis,
he said, should be compared with the harms of extracting more gas domestically.
"No review of any of the three individual LNG projects should proceed further until this carbon study is completed
by FERC," Kulongoski wrote.
Ted Sickinger: 503-221-8505 tedsickinger@ news.oregonian.com
©2008 The Oregonian
Appeals court: Keeps
pipeline data under wraps for now
Oct 2, 7:39 PM EDT
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP)
-- A three-judge Washington state appeals court panel has
ruled in favor of a coalition of pipeline companies that is seeking to keep certain pipeline information under wraps.
The appeals court panel cited the potential for terrorist threats as it sent the public records request
back to a Thurston County Superior Court for a potential trial.
The issue involves detailed pipeline information that could be used to locate compression stations and
valves in conjunction with businesses or homes, or perhaps environmentally sensitive areas such as wetlands.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten
or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.
Just A Thought
Is our state
really thinking of us when they hold back the information because of a possible terrorist threat? Or should the pipeline be
installed in the first place if it is such a terrorist threat? Maybe we are an LNG acceptable risk after all.
Guest column: Some say Northern Star's plan is 'a bad bribe'
By CHERYL JOHNSON
For The Daily Astorian
At first glance
Northern Star's claim that it was going to spend between $43 million and $59 million on salmon mitigation in the Columbia
River estuary could seem like a good deal.
To be clear, if someone just handed salmon recovery efforts this type of
money without any strings attached there would be reason to cheer.
But in Northern Star's case, the strings attached
to this money are more like heavy cables and they're being controlled by Texas energy speculators whose liquefied natural
gas scheme would industrialize life in the Columbia estuary both for salmon and those of us who live here.
Northern
Star's salmon mitigation plan is exactly what we have come to expect from a company that has already shown it is willing to
say or do just about anything to get its high-risk project approved.
For starters, when you spread out $43 million
to $59 million over the 30-year-plus life of the LNG terminal, there is less than $2 million a year for a project that will
generate literally billions for its owners. The commitment is actually quite stingy and the fact that tens of millions of
dollars are already spent on Columbia River restoration without major effects to date, the tangible benefits of this plan
are limited.
As the much touted centerpiece of their salmon plan, Northern Star has said it plans to purchase Svensen
Island for preservation. While we believe preserving Svensen Island would be a benefit to salmon, the reality is that the
Columbia Land Trust had already raised the money to buy the island, when Northern Star came into the picture and undermined
the purchase. As a result, even if Northern Star does buy the island how is that an added benefit to salmon when the island
was already in the process of being preserved?
Northern Star's mitigation plan similarly highlights the fact it will
preserve 57 acres of its own property along Hunt Creek with a conservation easement. However, it is already illegal under
local and state law to build on most of the land that would be "preserved" under this easement, so how does this benefit salmon?
Northern Star has provided very few details about how the money they have touted in the media would actually be spent.
It is clear that a majority of the money is simply the cost of meeting federal and state laws that require protection of salmon
and water quality. The notion that this somehow could make their project "sustainable" requires a real stretch of the imagination.
This is without question the highest impact project that has been proposed on the Columbia River in many decades.
It would make a key salmon rearing and migration area into an industrial port and create a bottleneck through which Columbia
River salmon must pass. It would remove billions of gallons of freshwater from the Columbia each year and ship it to foreign
countries as the ballast water deadweight in the hulls of outgoing LNG supertankers. This project would put our community
at constant threat of a catastrophic accident and create a level of fear that will exist regardless of whether or not such
an accident actually occurs. This project would be the first step in a wave of industrialization that would certainly follow
the siting of such a massive new supply of energy.
In exchange for all this, Northern Star has offered up what some
have openly called "a bad bribe" to see if our community will bite. The only encouraging thing about Northern Star's latest
public relations stunt is all of the outrage we have heard from people in response to feeling like once again the Texas city
slickers are trying to put one over on us simple country folk.
SHAUNA STEPHENSON/WTE A giant fireball from an accidental rupture of a 36-inch natural-gas pipeline can be seen here
from Otto Road just west of Cheyenne. The fireball was about seven miles west of Interstate 25 and two miles north of the
Wyoming-Colorado border on the Duck Creek Ranch.
El Paso Natural Gas Pipeline in Wyoming Explodes
By Courtney Dentch
Nov. 11 (Bloomberg) -- An El Paso Corp. Wyoming Interstate pipeline outside Cheyenne exploded today after it was struck
by a bulldozer, setting off a fire and killing a construction worker, the company said.
The blast shut the natural gas line at Laramie, and it will take about 24 hours to repair the line once investigators clear
the area, said Chris Jones, a spokesman for El Paso. The company's residential customers haven't been affected, he said.
The bulldozer was being used by subcontractors hired by Kinder Morgan to build its Rockies Express Pipeline adjacent to
the Wyoming Interstate line, Kinder Morgan spokesman Larry Pierce said. The crash occurred about 9:30 a.m. local time, he
said. The pipeline is about 9 miles southwest of Cheyenne, just north of the Colorado border.
Kinder Morgan has halted work on its pipeline, which it's developing in a joint venture with Sempra Energy and ConocoPhillips.
The $4.4 billion project will be a 1,663-mile (2,675-kilometer) pipeline that can transport as much as 1.8 billion cubic feet
of gas a day.
El Paso expects to be able to repair its damaged pipeline before retail customers are affected, Jones said. Other natural
gas moving through the Laramie station, including 246 million cubic feet per day of capacity from the Colorado Interstate
Gas Co., will be affected, Wyoming Interstate said in an online notice.
The man driving the bulldozer was killed, Kinder Morgan's Pierce said.
No other injuries have been reported, said Gerry Luce, a spokesman for the Laramie County sheriff's office. Authorities
are investigating what caused the bulldozer to crash into the pipeline.
The fire, which spread to less than 100 acres of land covered in prairie grass, was brought under control within 90 minutes,
Luce said.
Eye opening Information
Description
This list is dedicated to sharing pipeline safety and pipeline siting information to community
activists, government officials, and pipeline experts nationwide. It is our hope that through this sharing, initiatives that
will make pipelines safer will be adopted, and that citizens will be given a larger role in the oversight of pipeline safety
and pipeline siting nationwide.
Carlsbad New Mexcico
August 19, 2000
This 30 inch pipeline exploded killing 12 people.
CLARK COUNTY, KENTUCKY
Gas Line Breaks Sparking Massive Fire
Substantial Gas Fire Roars In Clark County
http://www.lex18.com/Global/story.asp?S=5184499&nav=EQlp
Shortly before 12:30 Saturday a natural gas line exploded sending flames
nearly a thousand feet into the air in the Trapp Goffs Corner area of Clark County.
Eye witness Walter Banks tells
LEX-18 News he could see the wall of flame erupting from the tree line several miles from his house. "It's hard to describe.
Flames were just every where in the air." said Banks.
Folks living closer to the pipeline like 93 year old Arch Stanhope
had to be evacuated from their homes. "It sounded like a big yellow helicopter. Like the whole world blew up for a few minutes,
and it just kept getting worse." Said Stanhope. Others describe the fire as sounding like the engine of a plane roaring but
never taking off.
Residents in neighboring Powell County say they found debris on cars and in yards. Those closer to
the county line, like Sandra Templin, tell LEX-18 News they too were evacuated and not allowed to return home. "They told
us to turn around. They won't let anybody in, and they're evacuating people." Said Templin.
Sometime before 4pm crews
were eventually able to shut the line down and put the flames out. Most residents were also allowed to return home. But because
the immediate area is too to approach, an accurate assessment of he damage is still not known. Yet, emergency crews say it's
believed the damage is limited to several trees and one car.
LEX-18 has learned the pipeline belongs to Tennessee Gas Pipeline. Company officials
say they don't know what caused the 24 inch interstate pipeline to rupture and may not know for some time due to the pending
investigation.
|
