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Coalition asks court to reject
project
Liquefied natural gas terminal
opposed
By JOE GYAN
JR.
Published: Mar 9, 2006
NEW ORLEANS
— A student attorney for a coalition of environmental and conservation groups
asked a federal appellate court Wednesday to overturn the U.S. Department of
Transportation’s permitting of Shell’s proposed liquefied natural gas terminal
in the Gulf of Mexico.
Tulane Environmental Law Clinic lawyer Alex
Williamson told a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
that the department violated the National Environmental Policy Act by not fully
examining the cumulative impacts on fisheries — redfish, shrimp, crabs and other
species — from all open-loop LNG facilities proposed for the
Gulf.
Williamson, arguing on behalf of the Gulf Restoration Network, the
Louisiana Charter Boat Association and the Sierra Club and supervised by Tulane
Environmental Law Clinic Director Adam Babich, also claimed the federal agency
violated the Deepwater Ports Act because the license for the Gulf Landing
terminal proposed by Shell did not require the company to use the “best
available technology.”
U.S. Justice Department attorney Todd Kim labeled
those arguments “meritless” and countered during the hearing that the open-loop
system is the best-available technology.
“We believe the closed-loop
system was inferior for this application. The open-loop technology was the
better one,” Kim told 5th Circuit Judges Patrick Higginbotham, W. Eugene Davis
and Carl Stewart.
The judges took the arguments under advisement without
indicating when a ruling will be handed down.
There are five LNG
terminals planned for the Gulf between the Texas-Louisiana and
Mississippi-Alabama borders, and one operational. There are 13 proposed for
spots onshore along the coast, with one already operating. LNG terminals are
touted as the tonic for the nation’s energy crunch.
Shell has a permit to
build an open-loop LNG terminal called Gulf Landing south of Lake Charles about
38 miles off the coast.
Open-loop ports allow companies to offload
liquefied natural gas and reheat the super-cooled liquid back into gas form.
Open-loop systems do this by taking in the warm Gulf water, using it to warm the
liquefied gas and then returning the colder water to the Gulf. Closed-loop
systems recycle the water used to reheat the gas. But it costs more because a
portion of the natural gas needs to be used to reheat the water to keep the
process going.
Warren Harris, an attorney for Gulf Landing LLC, told the
judges it would cost an additional $43 million a year to operate the terminal as
a closed-loop system rather than an open-loop system.
“We’re not talking
about a minor impact on cost,” he said, acknowledging that the open-loop system
would affect 3.8 percent of Gulf fisheries landings.
“The dollar impact
on the fishing industry may be much greater,” Higginbotham said.
Harris
said national energy interests must be factored into the equation as
well.
Kim said the closed-loop system causes air pollution, but
Williamson said closed-loop technology “causes the least
harm.”
Higginbotham noted that the proposed LNG terminals are not planned
for “dead water” sections of the Gulf but “very rich fish areas.”
“You
can’t close your eyes to the cumulative impact of this technology,” he told Kim.
“You have to be aware of the multiplier effect.”
In conducting its
cumulative impact analysis,
“We know how hungry
this country is for natural gas,” he said.
Gulf Restoration Network
campaign director Aaron Viles, who observed the court hearing, said the Gulf
Landing permitting “defies common sense.”
“There is complete agreement
among fisheries managers that these facilities will destroy marine life. The
only question is to what extent,” he said.
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/business/2432776.html
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