Former FERC Chair Joseph Kelliher, who was appointed by former President Bush, has announced his resignation will take effect Friday, March 13th.
Let’s hope the Obama administration makes its first FERC appointment one that will more closely scruitinize the Jordan Cove proposal.
Add comment March 11th, 2009
From this morning’s edition of The World:
Add comment March 7th, 2009
Platts, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, and a market leader for independent pricing and data for the energy and metals markets just published a report titled “A Change of Course for LNG.”
Here are a couple of key quotes from the report:
“With the softening of global gas demand in the context of economic stagnation or even shrinkage, the LNG market could very well be oversupplied in the near term, even before new liquefaction plants come online.”
Then, a couple of pages later, this:
“At the moment though, apart from strong environmental lobbying which has stopped a number of projects in their tracks, the commercial case for building regasification capacity is weak.”
The report also cited domestic shale gas as another reason for the collapse of the foregin LNG market.
Read the entire report below, but if you are a supporter of building the Jordan Cove LNG import terminal, pour yourself a stiff drink before you turn to the first page.
Add comment March 5th, 2009
Russian dictator for life President Vladimir Putin is threatening to cut off natural gas supplies to Europe. How many times do we have to learn this lesson the hard way? Russia is one of the largest suppliers of LNG in the world. Do we really want to put ourselves in a position to be dependent on the meglomaniaical whims of a former KGB agent the head of a foregin state to control our energy destiny?
Add comment March 5th, 2009
Earlier this month, I was blogging that FERC caught Jordan Cove underestimating the air pollution from LNG tankers.
On Friday, Jordan Cove responded to one of the key points that FERC raised: How can Jordan Cove’s air emissions be based on an 80-tanker capacity when in fact the proposed LNG terminal is designed to handle 116 tankers each year?
Their response? Trust us.
They say they are “committed” to operating the LNG terminal in a way that will limit emissions produced by LNG tankers. Then they go on to say they have “identified” a variety of operating scenarios for the terminal and tankers to comply with the air emissions cap.
Just a few problems that come to mind with this answer:
1) Jordan Cove never actually specifies what they are going to do or how air emission compliance can be assured, but rather says they are “evaluating” their options based on a technical paper that may or may not have anything to do with this particular project, hoping that FERC considers that a sufficient answer.
2) Jordan Cove says they will require ships minimize their emissions while unloading LNG.
Where do I begin with this one? JCEP has already admitted that most tankers are run under foreign flags; they have zero ability to control what these tankers do or do not do. They’ve admitted as much when they said that they would be such a small share of the tanker market that no tankers would be willing to install fish screening devices just to come to Coos Bay. If they won’t make that change, what’s the realistic chance that they will change the sort of fuel they burn? Their whole argument about “scheduling” ships that have the ability to control emissions falls flat on its face for the same reason. If this project were to be permitted, they’d have to take the tankers that were available to them and made the most economic sense at that particular moment in time, not based on the air emittants that would be pumped into our lungs.
Read Jordan Cove’s response below.
Add comment March 3rd, 2009
The LNG market just keeps imploding on itself: today two more daggers to the heart.
First, yesterday Calypso LNG, a subsidiary of energy giant SUEZ Energy North America, informed the U.S. Coast Guard that it will cease all license processing work on the Calypso Deepwater Port LNG project in Florida.
Second, the Oregon Deparment of Environmental Quality has “informally suspended” their work on processing Clean Air and Clean Water Permits for the Bradwood Landing LNG project on the Columbia River until Clatsop County land use appeals are settled.
*Dour note on the second piece of information: whenever one of the other two proposed LNG terminals in Oregon runs into some trouble, it provides a glimmer of hope for the otherwise moribund Jordan Cove scheme as an alternative, because they are hopelessly behind the other two projects in the permitting process. At this point, Jordan Cove’s only hope of success is as a default if the other two fail, so I always view bad news about Bradwood or Oregon LNG as a mixed blessing. As Mr. Braddock has said publicly on many occasions: there will be, at most, one project that gets permitted because even he admits that the need for two LNG terminals doesn’t exist. (I’m not sure the need for one exists, but I think I may have mentioned that.)
Add comment February 27th, 2009
Yep, it’s like we’ve been saying all along: Jordan Cove’s proposed LNG tanks exceed Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) height limits, so says the FAA.
In a report released to FERC earlier this week, the FAA conducted a limited aeronautical review concerning the proposed towering infernos LNG storage tanks on the North Spit. And the key finding from the report? (Drum roll, please)
OBSTRUCTION STANDARDS EXCEEDED.
Both North and South proposals would exceed the Category C &D traffic patterns and visual flight rules transition surfaces and maneuvering areas at the Southwest Oregon Regional Airport.
This pretty much guarantees that Jordan Cove will have to appeal to the FAA for a special use permit, which will certainly delay the project, if not kill it outright. Now I don’t claim to be an aeronautical expert, but it seems that especially after 9/11, those FAA folks take their air space zones pretty seriously.
Now, before this post makes its way into The World and Mr. Braddock gives his pro-forma denial about the impact of this blow to his project because the limited review said there weren’t any impacts, let me retort.
1) The FAA hasn’t yet done a full review other than proving your LNG tanks are inside airspace normally reserved for airplanes landing and taking off.
2) Who would be dumb enough to want to put hazardous tankers inside restricted airspace? The weather here is dodgy enough; what traveller would want to fly in on a day with low clouds (250 of ‘em) when your pilot can’t make visual contact with these babies that are already jutting into airspace that is supposed to be restricted for…airplanes?
Sheesh! Apparently someone slept through his freshman logic class.
jcep-letter-re-faa-feasability-report
Add comment February 25th, 2009
Sometimes when you are digging through a pile of government documents, you find the darndest things.
Take for instance this series of emails (attachments below) between the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Service, both of which are charged to ensure Jordan Cove and the California Pipeline’s impacts are avoided, minimized and/or mitigated.
If you read the February 17th, 2009 email from Doug Young of Fish and Wildlife, he states that Pacific Connector (the group trying to build the pipeline) had committed last July to putting forth a mitigation plan for preventing/mitigating habitat impacts on federal and non-federal lands. Young writes:
Unfortunately, while some progress has been made in defining mitigation actions for federal lands where ESA species/habitats occur), no similar effort has been expended for important habitats on private lands.
Promises, promises pipeline builders. In case you are in need of a Gregorian calendar, July 2008 was eight months ago. In the meantime, private landowners and those who care about biodiversity still have no idea what you are doing to protect habitat on private property.
See the emails below
Add comment February 25th, 2009
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission today published its new schedule to review the proposed Jordan Cove LNG terminal due to the “modifications” that Jordan Cove has been forced to undertake in response to questions that have arisen about the project.
The new dates mean the earliest that FERC could approve the project is July 30,2009.
Link to the file below.
Add comment February 23rd, 2009
Yet another nail in the LNG coffin as the Wall Street Jouranl looks at how wrong then Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was in 2003 when he said new LNG import terminals would have to be built in the U.S. to handle the surge of LNG imports.
Now, according to the WSJ:
“Mr. Greenspan and the industry experts who shared this view - and there were many - couldn’t have been more wrong.”
“Even before the economic slowdown, it was clear the nation had ample natural-gas supplies. Large-scale imports simply weren’t needed. And new reports suggest the U.S. won’t need to turn into a massive importer of natural gas anytime soon.”
Read the article by linking here to The Daily Astorian as the WSJ is a subscription-only service.
Add comment February 16th, 2009
