Natural selection

Residents of Clatsop County, Ore., are battling potentially huge changes to how the Northwest imports, generates and uses energy. On Sept. 16, 2008, Clatsop voters passed a referendum to ban a proposed gas pipeline that would cross designated open space. The 36-mile-long pipeline would serve a planned liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal on the Columbia River west of Portland at Bradwood Landing, and would allow internationally shipped LNG to enter existing natural gas pipelines in the Western states. Many residents along the pipeline’s path say they fear the threat of eminent domain claims that could forcibly take rights-of-way for a commercial structure they say they don’t even need.

Yet on Sept. 18, 2008, just two days after the referendum was passed, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) conditionally approved the siting of Texas-based NorthernStar Energy’s proposed LNG plant at Bradwood Landing—the very project the Clatsop referendum was designed to stop. FERC’s decision created an uproar in Oregon, with groups as diverse as Columbia Riverkeeper, Washington Department of Ecology and the state of Oregon filing protests against FERC’s decision during the 30-day review period.

Like other controversial energy plants—whether nuclear, coal, wind or others—the proposed LNG plant at Bradwood Landing has created tension between two distinct groups: government and citizen groups concerned about the LNG terminal’s possible impacts on gas prices, renewable energy development and the local environment; and FERC, pipeline companies, gas companies and utilities claiming they are trying to diversify gas supplies by opening the West Coast’s first LNG terminal.

While many experts claim that natural gas is a crucial bridge fuel in the development of renewable power—especially wind—many fear that opening domestic gas markets to international LNG could create more problems than it solves.

Making way for renewables
Recent interest in increasing the number of LNG terminals in the United States has been based on the assumption that imported natural gas would be needed to meet increased U.S. natural gas demand. But the Northwest and the United States as a whole have little demand for LNG imports—which are sold in a global market at consistently higher prices than domestic gas— according to the Oregon Department of Energy.

Early 2008 predictions of increasing gas prices and dwindling domestic supplies were proven false in July 2008, when Navigant Consulting and the Clean Skies Foundation announced new technology to access natural gas in tight sands, coal beds and shale. The announcement pushed reserve estimates to as high as 118 years at current rates of consumption, with the Northwest located in a sweet spot where gas pipelines from Canada and the Rockies converge.