Air-quality officials decry liquefied natural gas plans
By Craig D. Rose
San Diego Metro News
September 23, 2007
Nitrous-oxide emissions play a major role in causing ozone pollution, a prime component of Southern California's air-quality problems. While some of the gas now burned in the region is similar to that which will be imported from Costa Azul, pollution experts say the critical factor is that the average quality of gas now used here is significantly higher.
That average fuel quality will decline markedly when large quantities of Costa Azul's gas are imported, pollution monitors say.
Unlike the introduction of other sources of pollution – which trigger environmental review and plans for mitigation before they are permitted – utility regulators have opened the door to Costa Azul's gas with little scientific study and no plan for dealing with the expected pollution.
The technology exists to bring the gas from Costa Azul up to the average now in use across this region. However, state utility regulators are not requiring that level of treatment, and Sempra has declined to invest what it said would be an additional 1 percent to 2 percent of cost to clean the fuel.
The open-door approach to a new source of pollution has sparked outrage and lawsuits from air-pollution monitors, the city of San Diego and environmentalists. The State Lands Commission has sought to deal with the impact of Costa Azul's gas by requiring owners of the pipeline that would carry the fuel to come up with plans for monitoring and dealing with any pollution that results.
“If anybody wants to replace the natural gas we now get from interstate pipelines, it's fair to ask them to keep the same quality,” said Chung Liu, chief scientist for the South Coast Air Quality Management District in Los Angeles. “It's fair to ask anyone who wants to bring in gas to not make it worse.”
Local air-pollution officials preliminarily estimate that burning gas from Costa Azul will cause more than three times the nitrous-oxide pollution that is created by the San Diego Gas & Electric Co.-owned power plant in Escondido, currently the largest single source of these emissions in the county.
Air pollution already takes a heavy toll across Southern California. According to the South Coast district, pollution levels cause more than 5,000 premature deaths each year.
“We cannot afford any increase in emission from 'hot gas' in our region,” said Sam Atwood, a spokesman for the South Coast district.
San Diego County currently has 208 tons of nitrous-oxide emissions each day. Robert Reider, planning supervisor for the San Diego Air Pollution Control District, said the region's emissions must fall to roughly 195 tons to bring ozone levels down to federally mandated levels.
Burning gas from Costa Azul would add 1 ton per day of nitrous-oxide emissions to the local air basin, the pollution district estimates.
Doug Kline, a Sempra corporate spokesman, said a potential increase in pollution from the Costa Azul natural gas has not been “scientifically proven.” He also noted that Sempra's gas would meet a new standard set by the California Public Utilities Commission.
Rick Morrow, vice president of customer service for Sempra's utilities – SDG&E and Southern California Gas Co. – said some hot gas already is burned in the region, although he agreed that the average quality of gas now used does not fall into that range.
The utilities say it should be possible to mitigate whatever additional pollution results from burning the Costa Azul gas. They say equipment used by large gas-burning facilities such as power plants can be adjusted to minimize pollution.
Sempra's utilities also say they plan to monitor the effect on air quality as Costa Azul's gas is introduced.
The company has no plans to deal with a potential increase in emissions from residential heating equipment, hot-water systems and other smaller gas-burning devices. Denise King, a spokeswoman for Sempra's utilities, said the utilities do not believe emissions from that equipment will be an issue.
Emissions from residential appliances are currently responsible for 2 tons of nitrous-oxide emissions a day in San Diego County. Sempra estimates that emissions from those devices could increase by about 1 ton daily if they burn Costa Azul's natural gas.
The South Coast air district said hundreds of thousands of devices may be affected, setting the stage for a cumbersome and costly process if adjustments are needed to reduce emissions.
“The question is: Who will make the adjustments?” said Tina Cherry, a spokeswoman for the district.
Adjusting appliances in the field generally helps reduce emissions of all kinds, said a spokesman for GAMA, the gas-appliance industry association. Frank Stanonik, GAMA's chief technical adviser, added that the industry is studying other aspects of the new gas supply.
“We are at the beginning of starting to sponsor some research on how appliances of current design might react to seeing natural gas of different specifications,” Stanonik said. “It appears that most appliances would probably be able to handle the LNG. But I am not going to say there won't be problems. I don't have enough information.
“We want the gas to be the same as it is now. That would be our preference.”
Sempra said treating the gas to conform to a specification recommended by South Coast air-quality officials would not make economic sense. The LNG-derived fuel will compete against North American gas, which does not require the expensive shipping and processing of LNG.
Moreover, the California Public Utilities Commission, which last year voted to allow the Costa Azul gas into the state, does not require the gas to be cleaned to that degree.
In its vote, the PUC rejected requests by air-pollution regulators to postpone a decision until it could conduct a California Environmental Quality Assessment, which would have considered the air-quality impact of the gas.
Instead, the commission relied heavily on recommendations from natural gas industry trade groups to set what it characterized as a new and stricter standard for natural gas supply.
While commission members tightened the technical index for gas quality – called the Wobbe Index – they declined to lower it to a level suggested by pollution monitors, which would force further treatment of Costa Azul's gas.
The failure to perform the environmental analysis prompted the South Coast pollution district and the city of San Diego to sue the PUC. Ratepayers for Affordable Clean Energy, a coalition of environmental groups, also sued. The cases were filed in state courts.
“What we want is a meaningful review of the potential health hazards,” said San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre. “We are involved because there is a substantial threat to public health.”
Citing the ongoing litigation, the PUC declined to comment.
As the cases against the PUC move through the courts, the State Lands Commission has taken action. In July, it required owners of the pipeline that would be used to bring some of the gas from Costa Azul to provide a study of the environmental impact and offer a plan for mitigating whatever additional pollution it might create. That plan is due Oct. 1.
Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, who sits on the lands commission, said even though Sempra asserts that cleaning up the imported gas would be costly, not cleaning it up leaves others paying a price.
“This is a bottom-line issue for people with asthma and a bottom-line issue for health,” Garamendi said.
Henry Morse, general manager of North Baja Pipeline, a unit of TransCanada, said the company is studying the commission's decision, which came in an amendment to the company's state lands lease.
Sempra said fears of more pollution are exaggerated, although the pollution data that have alarmed critics were largely compiled by the company itself. The company's utilities said its estimates of additional pollution were based upon using gas from Costa Azul in existing equipment.
“We did thousands of tests on equipment over a three-year period,” said Morrow of Sempra's utilities. “We think there will be no impact on safety, and the impact on emissions will be extremely low.”
Craig Rose: (619) 293-1814; craig.rose@uniontrib.com
Read the original article and comments at www.signonsandiego.com
"Damned environmentalists again, interfering with OUR kids' asthma! "
San Diego Metro News
September 23, 2007
LNG is a supercooled, liquid version of natural gas, the fuel used widely to heat water, warm homes and drive electricity-generating plants. Converting the gas to liquid allows it to be shipped aboard specialized tankers and traded around the world.
COMMENTS:
- The gas Sempra will be importing contains more pollutants than most gas used in California. What will WestPac LNG be importing to BC?
- Sempra's LNG terminal would add tons of pollutants to the region's air basin. We already know WestPac's project will add at least 4 million tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere annually.
- Officials estimate that burning Sempra's gas will cause more than three times the nitrous-oxide pollution.
The natural gas from Sempra's new terminal, for example, is expected to come from Indonesia and other nations and begin arriving in Southern California early next year. It will travel through the same pipes that carry gas from Texas, New Mexico and Canada, as well as within California. It will be burned in the same equipment. But there is a key difference: Sempra's gas will bring hundreds of tons of additional air pollution to a region already struggling to improve some of the worst air in the United States. The Sempra fuel is “hot gas” in industry parlance, laden with compounds such as butane, propane and ethane that cause substantially more nitrous-oxide pollution when burned than most gas now used in Southern California. | ENERGIA COSTA AZUL FACTS Owner: Sempra Energy. The project, about 14 miles north of Ensenada, will be the first liquefied natural gas-receiving terminal on the West Coast of North America. Cost: $1 billion. Capacity:1 billion cubic feet of natural gas daily. Process: The gas will be drawn from fields in Indonesia and elsewhere, supercooled to a liquid state for shipping aboard specialized tankers and re-gasified for injection into conventional natural gas pipelines. Contracts: Sempra has deals in place to deliver about 15 percent of the terminal output in Mexico, with the rest exported to the United States. |
Nitrous-oxide emissions play a major role in causing ozone pollution, a prime component of Southern California's air-quality problems. While some of the gas now burned in the region is similar to that which will be imported from Costa Azul, pollution experts say the critical factor is that the average quality of gas now used here is significantly higher.
That average fuel quality will decline markedly when large quantities of Costa Azul's gas are imported, pollution monitors say.
Unlike the introduction of other sources of pollution – which trigger environmental review and plans for mitigation before they are permitted – utility regulators have opened the door to Costa Azul's gas with little scientific study and no plan for dealing with the expected pollution.
 Photo courtesy of Sempra Energy Local pollution officials say Sempra Energy's Energía Costa Azul LNG terminal would add tons of pollutants to the region's air basin, but Sempra says any potential increase hasn't been "scientifically proven." |
The technology exists to bring the gas from Costa Azul up to the average now in use across this region. However, state utility regulators are not requiring that level of treatment, and Sempra has declined to invest what it said would be an additional 1 percent to 2 percent of cost to clean the fuel.
The open-door approach to a new source of pollution has sparked outrage and lawsuits from air-pollution monitors, the city of San Diego and environmentalists. The State Lands Commission has sought to deal with the impact of Costa Azul's gas by requiring owners of the pipeline that would carry the fuel to come up with plans for monitoring and dealing with any pollution that results.
“If anybody wants to replace the natural gas we now get from interstate pipelines, it's fair to ask them to keep the same quality,” said Chung Liu, chief scientist for the South Coast Air Quality Management District in Los Angeles. “It's fair to ask anyone who wants to bring in gas to not make it worse.”
Local air-pollution officials preliminarily estimate that burning gas from Costa Azul will cause more than three times the nitrous-oxide pollution that is created by the San Diego Gas & Electric Co.-owned power plant in Escondido, currently the largest single source of these emissions in the county.
Air pollution already takes a heavy toll across Southern California. According to the South Coast district, pollution levels cause more than 5,000 premature deaths each year.
“We cannot afford any increase in emission from 'hot gas' in our region,” said Sam Atwood, a spokesman for the South Coast district.
San Diego County currently has 208 tons of nitrous-oxide emissions each day. Robert Reider, planning supervisor for the San Diego Air Pollution Control District, said the region's emissions must fall to roughly 195 tons to bring ozone levels down to federally mandated levels.
Burning gas from Costa Azul would add 1 ton per day of nitrous-oxide emissions to the local air basin, the pollution district estimates.
Doug Kline, a Sempra corporate spokesman, said a potential increase in pollution from the Costa Azul natural gas has not been “scientifically proven.” He also noted that Sempra's gas would meet a new standard set by the California Public Utilities Commission.
Rick Morrow, vice president of customer service for Sempra's utilities – SDG&E and Southern California Gas Co. – said some hot gas already is burned in the region, although he agreed that the average quality of gas now used does not fall into that range.
The utilities say it should be possible to mitigate whatever additional pollution results from burning the Costa Azul gas. They say equipment used by large gas-burning facilities such as power plants can be adjusted to minimize pollution.
Sempra's utilities also say they plan to monitor the effect on air quality as Costa Azul's gas is introduced.
The company has no plans to deal with a potential increase in emissions from residential heating equipment, hot-water systems and other smaller gas-burning devices. Denise King, a spokeswoman for Sempra's utilities, said the utilities do not believe emissions from that equipment will be an issue.
Emissions from residential appliances are currently responsible for 2 tons of nitrous-oxide emissions a day in San Diego County. Sempra estimates that emissions from those devices could increase by about 1 ton daily if they burn Costa Azul's natural gas.
The South Coast air district said hundreds of thousands of devices may be affected, setting the stage for a cumbersome and costly process if adjustments are needed to reduce emissions.
“The question is: Who will make the adjustments?” said Tina Cherry, a spokeswoman for the district.
Adjusting appliances in the field generally helps reduce emissions of all kinds, said a spokesman for GAMA, the gas-appliance industry association. Frank Stanonik, GAMA's chief technical adviser, added that the industry is studying other aspects of the new gas supply.
“We are at the beginning of starting to sponsor some research on how appliances of current design might react to seeing natural gas of different specifications,” Stanonik said. “It appears that most appliances would probably be able to handle the LNG. But I am not going to say there won't be problems. I don't have enough information.
“We want the gas to be the same as it is now. That would be our preference.”
Sempra said treating the gas to conform to a specification recommended by South Coast air-quality officials would not make economic sense. The LNG-derived fuel will compete against North American gas, which does not require the expensive shipping and processing of LNG.
Moreover, the California Public Utilities Commission, which last year voted to allow the Costa Azul gas into the state, does not require the gas to be cleaned to that degree.
In its vote, the PUC rejected requests by air-pollution regulators to postpone a decision until it could conduct a California Environmental Quality Assessment, which would have considered the air-quality impact of the gas.
Instead, the commission relied heavily on recommendations from natural gas industry trade groups to set what it characterized as a new and stricter standard for natural gas supply.
While commission members tightened the technical index for gas quality – called the Wobbe Index – they declined to lower it to a level suggested by pollution monitors, which would force further treatment of Costa Azul's gas.
The failure to perform the environmental analysis prompted the South Coast pollution district and the city of San Diego to sue the PUC. Ratepayers for Affordable Clean Energy, a coalition of environmental groups, also sued. The cases were filed in state courts.
“What we want is a meaningful review of the potential health hazards,” said San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre. “We are involved because there is a substantial threat to public health.”
Citing the ongoing litigation, the PUC declined to comment.
As the cases against the PUC move through the courts, the State Lands Commission has taken action. In July, it required owners of the pipeline that would be used to bring some of the gas from Costa Azul to provide a study of the environmental impact and offer a plan for mitigating whatever additional pollution it might create. That plan is due Oct. 1.
Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, who sits on the lands commission, said even though Sempra asserts that cleaning up the imported gas would be costly, not cleaning it up leaves others paying a price.
“This is a bottom-line issue for people with asthma and a bottom-line issue for health,” Garamendi said.
Henry Morse, general manager of North Baja Pipeline, a unit of TransCanada, said the company is studying the commission's decision, which came in an amendment to the company's state lands lease.
Sempra said fears of more pollution are exaggerated, although the pollution data that have alarmed critics were largely compiled by the company itself. The company's utilities said its estimates of additional pollution were based upon using gas from Costa Azul in existing equipment.
“We did thousands of tests on equipment over a three-year period,” said Morrow of Sempra's utilities. “We think there will be no impact on safety, and the impact on emissions will be extremely low.”
Craig Rose: (619) 293-1814; craig.rose@uniontrib.com
Read the original article and comments at www.signonsandiego.com
"Damned environmentalists again, interfering with OUR kids' asthma! "
posted by Friend of Texada at
11:38 PM
