After a proposed offshore-liquefied natural gas terminal at the apex of the New York Bight received a promising draft environmental assessment, opponents have stepped up pressure on the governors of New York and New Jersey, hoping either one could veto the plan under federal coastal management law.
(The New York Bight is a slight indentation along the Atlantic coast ranging from Cape Cod, Mass., to Cape May, N.J., and includes Buzzard’s Bay, Long Island Sound, New York Harbor and the New Jersey shore.)
Now the Coast Guard and Maritime Administration have stopped the clock on their review process, seeking more time to analyze the plan in light of a new Army Corps of Engineers requirement that the terminal’s subsea delivery pipeline be buried 15 feet below the seafloor, more than double the seven feet in the plan reviewed by the agencies. More time is needed to review the project’s compliance with the Clean Air Act.
And while it’s not part of the environmental analysis, Marad is waiting for information on who exactly would be financially responsible for an accident involving the terminal and its pipeline, according to a letter the agencies sent to would-be port developer, Liberty Natural Gas, after a public comment period that ended in mid-March.
The Port Ambrose plan is the largest of several ideas floated in recent years for channeling LNG through New York, using offload turret buoys and a new pipeline 19 miles south of Long Beach, N.Y. The draft environmental impact statement released by Marad and the Coast Guard in December portrays the project as having a relatively benign impact on the ocean. Liberty Natural Gas promptly rustled up letters of support from more than 100 business, labor and community groups, supporting its argument contending it will lower homeowners’ energy costs in the region.
Critics fired back. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer and Letitia James, the city’s public advocate, and city Councilman Donovan Richards, said they would ask Gov. Andrew Cuomo to block the project.
Outside the heavily Democratic city, Republicans in suburban Long Island were complaining too. State Senate Republican majority leader, Dean Skelos, who represents Nassau County on the Long Island, told Cuomo he is against the terminal plan.
Opposition is also being driven by environmental advocates who have successfully blocked hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in upstate New York. They see an offshore terminal that could become a net exporter of U.S. LNG to energy-hungry Europe.
“Port Ambrose is currently proposed as a facility to ‘import’ natural gas from foreign sources. However, clearly there is no need. The United States has an abundance of natural gas,” according to the New Jersey-based group Clean Ocean Action, which has asked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to block LNG terminal plans. “The real plan is that Liberty Natural Gas will flip this facility into an export facility to ship U.S. domestic natural gas to Europe or to the highest bidder.”
Not true, Liberty says. “The Port Ambrose project is an import only project – no exports will take place from the facility. The project will not have the technology, including the cooling equipment, that would be needed to export gas,” the company said on its website. The design and federal permits sought by the company only allow shuttle and re-gasification vessels (SRVs) to inject gas into a planned 22-mile subsea pipeline that would connect with the existing Transco Lower New York Bay Lateral pipeline that links New York City and Long Island with gas supplies coming through New Jersey.
Subsurface buoy terminals are the design of choice now. Another proposal years ago, at the beginning of the gas boom, was for an artificial island that drew fire from fishermen and other maritime interests. You can view the Port Ambrose LNG terminal plan on its website.
