Offshore staff
(US) - Woodside Natural Gas Inc. says its proposed OceanWay Secure Energy project, a state-of-the-art process for delivering Australian natural gas to help meet California's growing energy needs, will be more than 20 mi (32 km) off the coast of Los Angeles, California.
OceanWay will not need the construction of an LNG terminal onshore, or an offshore platform.
Instead, gas will be delivered from specially designed ships through an undersea pipeline to existing gas pipeline facilities in an industrial area near Los Angeles International Airport (LAX),with little or no disruption to residential neighborhoods, says the company.
The process of converting LNG to regular natural gas begins onboard the ship, which connects to an underwater buoy, facilitating a secure connection to OceanWay's undersea pipeline, and then is proposed to be connected to the Southern California Gas Co. system.
The company says that ocean views would not be affected because the proposal had no surface terminal.
The President of Woodside Natural Gas, Jane Cutler, says, "When a ship is delivering natural gas it will be over 20 mi offshore, over five mi beyond commercial shipping lanes and barely visible even on the clearest of days. The rest of the time, only a small marker will be on the surface of the water."
Under Woodside's proposal, the undersea pipeline will come ashore below ground in the industrial area next to LAX.
The location is near the same industrial strip as the Los Angeles Department of Public Works' Hyperion sewage treatment facility, the Scattergood power plant and the Chevron oil refinery. The onshore receiving facilities for OceanWay will be minimal.
Cutler says Woodside had three critical criteria in mind when choosing a site for the OceanWay proposal.
"These were to minimize environmental disturbance, to maximize the distance from residential areas, and to ensure the site is a sufficient distance from shipping lanes and marine preserves.
"With our buoy placed so far offshore and no terminal, our pipeline completely undersea and underground, and our landfall point within the LAX industrial area, we believe our proposal meets those requirements."
Woodside is now beginning the permit application process and will seek approval from federal, state, and local agencies, including the US Coast Guard, California State Lands Commission, and California Coastal Commission, before the proposal proceeds.
03/17/06
