High court LNG ruling gives ‘ammo’ to opponents

Published 5:00 pm Monday, March 31, 2008

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a liquefied natural gas siting controversy on the East Coast has Lower Columbia residents hopeful of fresh “ammunition” in the fight against LNG.

Delaware won a Supreme Court fight with New Jersey Monday, likely killing a proposed LNG terminal on the Delaware River. The justices, in a 6-2 decision, said Delaware can block the project, even though it was proposed by energy giant BP for Jersey’s side of the river.

Opponents of the Bradwood Landing LNG project, proposed for a site 20 miles east of Astoria, are hoping to use the decision to bring Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire into the debate over LNG in Oregon.

Delaware said it wanted to stop the BP LNG project because of safety concerns. The state owns the river bottom most of the way across the waterway, including the land on which a 2,200-foot-long pier would be built on the Jersey side.

The states agree that Delaware owns the land, but New Jersey argued that a century-old agreement allows each state to control piers on its side of the river.

Washington residents who oppose the Bradwood Landing project say they’ve been trying to get Gov. Gregoire to at least back Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who has questioned the need for LNG and criticized the federal LNG terminal siting process.

“This will give us more ammunition to ask (Gregoire) to give this serious consideration,” said George Exum, who lives on Puget Island, across the Columbia River shipping channel from the proposed Bradwood Landing LNG terminal.

Exum noted U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., and three Washington state representatives have announced their opposition to the Bradwood project, which has a 36-mile natural gas pipeline that would cut through Washington’s Cowlitz County on its way to the Williams Interstate Pipeline in Kelso, Wash.

“I think this is a wake-up call to (Gregoire),” said Marjie Castle, a Cowlitz County resident who owns property along the Bradwood pipeline route. “She thinks the project doesn’t impact a large area of the state, but it does.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court, said Delaware cannot block ordinary projects from going forward. The BP proposal for New Jersey, however, “goes well beyond the ordinary or usual,” she said.

Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia dissented. Under a 1905 agreement, Scalia said, New Jersey has exclusive authority over construction of wharves on its side of the river.

The states cited different provisions of their 1905 agreement that spells out, among other things, fishing rights and law enforcement authority on the portion of the 410-mile river that serves as the border between them.

The dispute concerned a terminal that BP wanted to build on the New Jersey side of the river. New Jersey officials approved the project, which could bring more than 1,300 construction jobs.

Delaware officials, however, have refused to authorize construction of a 2,000-foot-long pier, which would be built on the part of the river bottom that belongs to Delaware. Without the pier, the project could not go forward.

Delaware’s lawyer told the court that the state has only twice in 160 years denied permission to build a pier on the Jersey side of the river, and both instances involved LNG facilities.

Up to 150 ships a year would dock at the proposed pier, which would be directly across the river from Claymont, Del. Delaware says the proposal raises safety fears because an estimated 22,000 residents living near the river’s main shipping channel would be at risk in case of a major accident. BP said the facility could deliver up to 1.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day to the Mid-Atlantic region.

A court-appointed special master concluded last year that Delaware has the authority to block the pier.

Justice Stephen Breyer did not participate in the case. He owns $15,000 to $50,000 in BP stock, according to his most recent financial disclosure.

The case is New Jersey v. Delaware, Original 134.