Environmentalists to Rally for Shore Against Liquified Natural Gas Port

By Elaine Van Develde

It's a battle Clean Ocean Action and more than 100 other environmental groups have fought before and won — the familiar war waged against the installation of an underwater liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal about 20 miles off the coast of Sea Bright, Sandy Hook and Long Branch.

Now, however, the environmental Tsunami of outrage on the subject has again swelled; and Clean Ocean Action is hosting a rally and citizen public hearing of its own on the newly proposed Liberty Natural Gas Port Ambrose project starting at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday at Sea Bright Public Beach.

The goal: to get Gov. Chris Christie to veto what environmentalists see as an ecologically and economically disasterous project, as he did in 2011 with a similar proposal by the company. The application for Ambrose was announced via public notice on June 14 to the federal Maritime Administration and U.S. Coast Guard, and the public comment period is currently ongoing.

To Clean Ocean Action Executive Director Cindy Zipf, it's an environmental nightmare revisited. To Liberty Natural Gas, it's a way to get more natural gas to more people and cheaper.

Liquified natural gas is natural gas that is chilled nearly 300 degrees below zero to substantially condense its volume to 1/600th of the original, Clean Ocean Action research shows.
 
"Port Ambrose is designed to provide the necessary infrastructure to safely deliver additional, diverse supplies of natural gas directly into the growing markets in the downstate, New York City and Long Island areas to help meet existing and future load requirements, particularly during periods of peak winter and summer demand," the project description on the company's website said.

Port Ambrose would be a deep-water port bordering New York Harbor in "federal waters" roughly 20 miles off New Jersey and New York shorelines. The terminal would deliver an estimated 400 million cubic feet of gas supplying about 1.5 million homes, according to Port Ambrose's description.

The main supplier of the gas would be the Caribbean country of Trinidad and Tobago, which, according to the company, has been a main exporter of liquified natural gas to the United States.

Concerning environmental and safety viability, which environmentalists vehemently doubt, Port Ambrose purports to have measures in place, such as review and approval of the U.S. Coast Guard and "meet and exceed all applicable state and federal environmental regulations," according to its website.

Clean Ocean Action says that for the energy companies promoting the cost-effectiveness of the ports it's more a case of their greed trumping a pristine environment and robust economy to benefit all.

The touted cost savings and more efficient gas supply to Americans, as Clean Ocean Action sees it, is a transparent facade slapped over the stark reality that overseas gas prices have soared and "energy companies are scrambling to build LNG facilities for exporting U.S.-produced natural gas overseas.

"Already, licenses have been grated to export over 40 percent of all U.S. daily production, and Congress recently passed a law allowing exports from ports like Liberty," Clean Ocean Action's report on the subject says. Liberty has partnered with Norwegian companies, APL and Hoegh LNG on project construction.

The Ambrose project, in particular, Clean Ocean Action says, comes with significant water and noise pollution ramifications, affecting tourism, recreation and shipping while being a catalyst for higher electricity costs and encouraging fracking.

"We don't need to increase our ability to burn more fossil fuel at this time," the Surfrider Foundation said in a released statement. "Foreign imported LNG has a larger carbon footprint than domestic natural gas due to the cooling, transportation and re-gasification required.

"Fishing, diving and boating would be impacted with 20 miles of seafloor dredged and dug up. The project would be in an prime wind energy generation area."

And while Clean Ocean Action and other environmentalists have said the project, in a post-Hurricane Sandy era, makes it even less viable to even take a chance on.

Ambrose's website says of such storms that the port would be monitored and would withstand it.

A compounded natural and man-made disaster waiting to happen is what it is, according to Clean Ocean Action principals.

"This LNG port will adversely impact the economies and ecologies depended upon by millions of Americans and the public deserves the opportunity to give it careful consideration.”  Clean Ocean Action Coastal Policy Attorney Sean Dixon said in a release. "(It) would present unacceptable and substantial risks to the State’s residents, natural resources, economy and security … stifle investment in renewable energy technologies by increasing our reliance on foreign sources… [and] create a heightened risk in a densely developed region, including potential accidents or sabotage disrupting commerce in the Port of New York and New Jersey.”

The public comment session ends on July 23. In the meantime, the unofficial citizens' hearing of Thursday's event on Sea Bright Public Beach will be held from 6 to 8 p.m.; and the rally will precede it from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m.