The state marine resources office held its own hearing on the dredging and wetlands issues affecting the Gulf LNG project in late June. John McCutchen, chief operating officer for what the company calls the "Gulf LNG Clean Energy Project," provided details of the planned terminal. It will include a 62-acre dredged berth area to accommodate tankers. The liquid gas will be off-loaded into 260,000-cubic-meter LNG storage tanks and go through a series of pumps and vaporizers to change the LNG back to gas. The gas will then be fed into three interstate pipelines for delivery to Florida and other inland markets.
Like the FERC event, the marine resources hearing was sparsely attended. The government's zeal to push these projects forward while the region is still recovering has frustrated groups opposed to the LNG projects, who say local citizens are too absorbed with their own survival to attend hearings. "They don't have time to be citizen activists the way they used to, and keep an eye on everything that's going on," complained Becky Gillette, the co-chair of the Mississippi Chapter of the Sierra Club.
In testimony before the marine board, Gillette discussed the potential danger to the public of catastrophic fires from marine accidents or terrorist actions targeting LNG vessels. "I think it would be wrong to expect Pascagoula to take two of these LNG ports on when there's no other communities in the country that have a large population that is based next to one of these LNG plants," she said. "This is simply not a risk that people elsewhere are willing to accept." Six of the eight witnesses at the hearing opposed the projects, including activist Vessey, who asked the state commissioners to delay any decision on dredging to conduct further soil testing at the proposed LNG site.
On July 9, the state's marine resources office gave Gulf LNG the green light to start dredging more than 60 acres of the Bayou Casotte Ship Channel and fill in more than 15 acres near the site of its planned facility.
"Soon we hope to receive a final environmental impact statement by FERC, followed by permits to construct and operate the facility," Gulf LNG spokesman Scott Wagner told GCRW. There are "no significant environmental issues" that need to be addressed, he said.
Gulf LNG is partly owned by Sonangol, the Angolan state-owned energy company that will supply 100 percent of the natural gas the company will import through the terminal. Sonangol's LNG fields are being developed by a consortium of companies that include Chevron, British Petroleum, TOTAL and Exxon Mobil.
The Houston investors behind the terminal are not well-known, and hope to stay that way. Asked about the primary owners of Gulf LNG, Wagner described them as a "small group of investors." But he would not identify them by name, saying "they like to remain low-key." In fact, the project is headed by McCutchen, Dee Osborne and Joseph Peacock.
All three men used to work for Crest Investment Corp., a company owned by Jamal Daniel, a Syrian-American businessman based in Houston. Daniel has close ties to the Bush family and is an adviser to New Bridge Strategies, a Washington lobbying firm once associated with Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. Daniel was recently identified as the single largest donor to Barbour's 2005 election committee in Mississippi.
So it was hardly surprising to read, in a press release distributed by Gulf LNG last year, that the governor had endorsed the LNG projects in Pascagoula. The Chevron and Gulf LNG terminals, Barbour said, will "address a growing demand for energy in the U.S. and would position Mississippi as a leader in the supply of clean and reliable energy to the region."
Originally appeared in 2006 on the Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch website. Copyright © 2006 by Tim Shorrock. Reprinted with permission.
