Advocates laud halt of gas tank proposal

Ocean advocates are welcoming a decision by Atlantic Sea Island Group (ASIG) to withdraw its proposal to construct Safe Harbor Energy, a 116-acre liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility on a man-made island 19.5 miles off the coast of Sea Bright in Monmouth County.

Cindy Zipf, executive director of Clean Ocean Action, which led opposition to the project it labeled “Insanity Island,” said she thinks public opinion played a large role in the company’s decision.

“I think it was that they were reading the public sentiment and that we have a governor who holds a veto pen and says he doesn’t support LNG; those are not very hard signs to read. I can’t see many of the factors that they used wisely to make their decision to withdraw their application changing anytime soon. Public opinion is going to be in opposition because this project makes no public sense.”

Zipf and other local environmental groups, including Surfrider Foundation and the Bayshore Regional Watershed Council, lauded the decision in a press release.

“The news is wonderful because it provides one important step toward making our ocean and all its wonderful sea creatures safe and healthy,” said Joseph Reynolds, cochair of the Bayshore Regional Watershed Council. “The passing of [ASIG] should provide a warning light to other people who want to industrialize our ocean with shortterm, dirty and destructive fossil fuel nightmare projects.”

A spokesman for ASIG, who declined to provide his name, would not comment on the issue beyond confirming that the project’s application had indeed been withdrawn.

“ASIG has suspended the project temporarily until the political upheaval with the Gulf [oil leak] has quieted down, and the company expects to reactivate in about six months,” he said.

According to a letter from attorneys for ASIG addressed to Mark Prescott, chief of Deepwater Ports Standards Division, U.S. Coast Guard, provided by Clean Ocean Action, many factors, including the recent retirement of founder and CEO Howard Bovers, resulted in the decision to suspend the application.

The letter also cited the “climate” regarding offshore development after the Gulf oil leak and ongoing economic uncertainty as reasons for ASIG’s decision.

“Please note,” the letter continued, “that by no means does this determination suggest ASIG’s intent to terminate the Safe Harbor Energy project; rather it is ASIG’s intent to reactivate the process upon resolution of the issues identified above.”

According to Zipf, the construction of the facility would have a drastic environmental impact, including extensive damage to marine habitat.

“[ASIG] really never felt that their project was environmentally harmful even though they were going to be destroying 140 acres of sea floor in one of the richest fish habitats on our shores,” she said.

Zipf was concerned that contaminants from construction materials could seep into the ocean.

“If you add a hurricane or a nor’easter during the construction phase, a lot of damage could result to the island and a lot of loss of material in addition to what had been lost [during construction], so that whole construction phase would have been very environmentally harmful,” she said.

Zipf also said ASIG had not revealed the facility’s waste management plans.

When empty, the large LNG tankers must take on seawater to maintain ballast, presenting another environmental concern.

“They suck in millions, if not billions, of gallons of seawater that is rich with life, fish eggs and larvae, right in this very important habitat for fluke and squid and all kinds of very commercially important fish. They would destroy all that marine life,” Zipf said. “They did an estimate, and it was in the millions of animals every year … we were gathering the information to dispute that as being a lowball [estimate.]”

Zipf and her organization have opposed the project since it was announced in August 2007.

“When we first found out about this project, we immediately said that building an island is insanity, which is how we came up with the idea of calling it Insanity Island, but we really didn’t know much about liquefied natural gas.

“We didn’t know whether LNG was going to be a knight in shining armor or Darth Vader, and it turned out that it was a very bad energy choice for a variety of reasons.

“When we looked at all the different issues, LNG was a dirty, foreign, expensive fossil fuel that was going to take us in the wrong direction for energy policy,” said Zipf.

The processing, Zipf said, is what makes LNG so dirty.

“First of all, it’s in foreign countries, so you start with countries whose environmental rules for even extracting the natural gas are going to be less than the U.S. rules — not that we go far enough; we have problems with our harvesting of natural gas as well, but you can imagine what it is like in Russia, Algeria or the other countries that are pulling it out of the ground.”

According to Zipf, the liquefaction process is extremely energy-intensive.

“You have to burn a lot of fossil fuels to get it down to minus-260 degrees [the temperature at which the gas liquifies,] then you stick it in a ship and burn a lot of fossil fuels traveling over the ocean to get it to wherever you want it.

“Then, you have to reheat it once you get there, so you burn even more fossil fuels.

“By the time you get it to the United States, it is almost as dirty as coal, which is the worst of the worst, so it really is not going to help reduce our carbon footprint,” Zipf said, adding that it is 40 percent more polluting than domestic natural gas.

Zipf said that concerns over LNG extended beyond the environmental impact to national security risks as well.

“The folks over in New York were very worried about this kind of facility being so close to their shoreline, in the line of not one, not two, but three airports, in a port area where all sorts of ships and things come in. The terrorism risk factor for the folks there was a huge concern,” she said.

Two additional LNG plants are planned for the Jersey Coast: Excalibur’s Liberty Natural Gas off Asbury Park and Exxon- Mobil’s Blue Ocean Energy, off Sea Girt.

One down and two to go,” Zipf said, “We’re hopeful that [the other projects] are going to see the wise decision that ASIG has made in looking at the reality: there is a governor who doesn’t want them off his coast, the public doesn’t want them off the coast, the economy is in the tank, and the U.S. has enough domestic natural gas to last a long time. We are the No. 1 producer of natural gas in the world. We are not dependent on anyone for natural gas, and we should keep it that way.”