Propaganda and the push for liquid natural gas
By Thomas Elias
August 15, 2006
The chart projected onto huge screens at a federal
Department of Energy forum on liquefied natural gas should have said it all:
There is no need.
But if you listened to the energy experts on hand - who could not be
cross-examined and did not take follow-ups to written questions - that chart and
other similar ones might as well not have existed.
Meanwhile, one small remark from a mid-level Energy Department official may have
revealed the true reasons why the federal government has steadily supported the
ongoing push to build at least one more LNG terminal on the West Coast to join
the one now under construction in Baja California - and maybe as many as four
more.
Take the chart first. Titled "Pacific Natural Gas Consumption 2003-2030," this
diagram summed up the predictions of the federal government's Energy Information
Administration, America's most authoritative energy forecasters.
The analysis predicts that residential use of natural gas in the entire Pacific
region, where California accounts for about 80 percent of population, will
remain constant at just over 500 billion cubic feet of gas per year for the next
24 years. Commercial use will rise very slightly, as will use by heavy
industries, but use of natural gas for generating energy will actually drop,
leaving total natural gas use in the region at about 3.3 trillion cubic feet per
year - almost exactly the same as today.
This forecast fully accounted for expected large population increases. It also
does not even mention that natural gas reserves are at all-time record levels
today, with no drop in sight.
So why does the federal government enthusiastically back plans to import LNG -
natural gas that's frozen at its faraway foreign sources and brought to America
in gigantic tankers built specifically for the task?
Here's what Glen Sweetnam, director of the International, Economic and
Greenhouse Gases Division of the federal Energy Information Administration, told
the experts in attendance:
"Bringing LNG to California would allow domestic production of natural gas to
stay in the Southwest and South or move to the East Coast."
Nothing there about domestic production of natural gas dropping in the next 25
years, as some proponents of LNG insist it will. But plenty there about
supplying cheap gas to parts of the country that already pay less than
Californians for almost all kinds of energy, from electricity to natural gas to
gasoline.
Amazingly, this federal plan to make California dependent on foreign energy and
perpetuate high natural gas prices for decades to come gets no resistance from
state and local officials. They are sometimes fatalistic, sometimes downright
enthusiastic.
The state Public Utilities Commission, for example, last year gave permission
for the state's big natural gas utilities to give up one-fourth of the space
they have long reserved on the big pipelines bringing gas here from Texas,
Oklahoma and the Rocky Mountain region. The commission assumption was that LNG
would replace much of the domestic supply - and never mind that LNG will almost
certainly be far more expensive.
Then there's Mary Nichols, director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment, a
board member of the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, the former No. 2
official at the federal Environmental Protection Agency, former secretary of the
state Resources Agency and a onetime chair of the state Air Resources Board.
"The question isn't really whether California needs LNG or will see it, but
where and when and how it will arrive," she said.
A fait accompli, she thus indicated, in spite of the fact federal studies
indicate there is no real need for it. Oh, but some officials say contracts for
LNG will guarantee that the price of natural gas remains steady at today's rate
of about $5.49 per thousand cubic feet (an estimated $11.20 in 2030 dollars).
They don't mention that today's gas prices are at or near record levels, and
that prices have a long history of peaks and valleys. They don't note that
prices for natural gas futures have actually dropped over the last few months.
They don't explain why prices should be essentially frozen at peak levels. Nor
do they note that the $5 to $10 billion cost for each LNG receiving terminal and
the fleet of tankers serving it will surely be built into rates, raising the
cost to consumers even more.
In short, even though the best forecasts indicate California would not need LNG
if it maintained its traditional reserved gas supplies, and even though LNG will
surely cause gas bills for every home and business in the state to rise, Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration is quietly having California cede part of
its supply to the East and South, just as federal officials want it to - and
getting no compensation or credit for doing so.
In the meantime, every major official involved makes nothing but positive noises
about something that will negatively affect every household in this state.
It's a classic propaganda technique: tell the untruths as loudly and as often as
you can and eventually everyone (even someone with the long resume of a Mary
Nichols) will accept them as true and inevitable.
Thomas D. Elias is a syndicated columnist whose work appears in The Union.
Contact him via e-mail at tdelias@aol.com.
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