Long Beach must have seemed the perfect location for a liquefied natural gas terminal when Mitsubishi Corp. unfurled its plans more than two years ago for the $450-million project.
This is not a city that shies from the ugly realities of energy production. Oil pumps still bob in the Los Cerritos marshes, and those palm-dotted islands offshore are really poorly disguised oil derricks.
But despite this port city's reputation as pro-industry, the proposed LNG terminal has set off a furious debate over safety.
Under pressure from a coalition of LNG critics, the City Council will consider Tuesday whether to cut off talks with a Mitsubishi subsidiary, a move that could doom the terminal.
Slow to react, Long Beach now joins many other towns, from rural Maine to Oregon, where fierce community opposition has ignited as more than 40 terminals have been proposed along the nation's coasts. With domestic supplies of the gas that fuels stoves, heaters and power plants on the decline, the industry is increasingly looking to import it.
At the center of the debate in Long Beach and nationwide are concerns that an accident or terrorist attack at an urban LNG facility could puncture a massive tanker or storage tank and create a conflagration.
But LNG supporters counter that cities in Europe and Asia have imported liquefied gas for decades without a major release or terminal fire, and they call the current fears overblown.
Tom Giles, who is spearheading the Long Beach project for Tokyo-based Mitsubishi, said many federal and state agencies are scrutinizing safety plans for the proposed terminal.
"No other LNG terminal in the world has ever been looked at more closely," said Giles, executive vice president of Sound Energy Solutions, the Mitsubishi subsidiary developing the project with ConocoPhillips.
Some Long Beach residents are questioning the wisdom of building the terminal at the Los Angeles-Long Beach seaport complex, the nation's busiest, less than two miles from the city's refurbished downtown. A recent federal report stoked their worries, concluding that a tanker fire caused by terrorists could inflict second-degree burns within 30 seconds on people a mile away.
"That politicians at any level of government could consider putting this much risk so close to such dense population is unforgivable," said Bry Myown, a Long Beach LNG critic and neighborhood activist.
