MEXICO CITY — For two years, Long Beach has debated a proposed $450-million energy terminal, weighing environmental and safety concerns against the demand for new jobs and much-needed natural gas.
When the City Council voted June 8 to await further environmental reviews for a plant that would import liquefied natural gas, the project's developers were guaranteed only one thing: several more months in limbo.
Even as Americans fret over such projects, Mexico is embracing them.
The same week of the Long Beach vote, Mexico's energy ministry disclosed that Spanish energy giant Repsol YPF had proposed building a natural-gas terminal in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas -- one of half a dozen such projects moving forward along Mexico's Pacific and Gulf coasts.
"Assuring a sufficient supply of energy with international standards of quality and competitive prices is the first strategic objective of the Mexican government's energy sector," said Carlos Garza Ibarra, Mexico's energy undersecretary.
Coastal natural-gas terminals, he said, are a key to the country's efforts to guarantee future supply "without pressuring the North American market, which is already at a deficit."
The public opposition that has stopped several California projects is present to some degree in Mexico, with many Baja Californians having raised concerns that echo those being heard in Long Beach.
But such protests have generally been trumped by a judicial system deferential to federal authorities, who are pushing imports of natural gas in liquefied form as an answer to the country's pressing need for the fuel.
The gas is supercooled to turn it into a liquid, reducing its volume and easing its transport aboard huge oceangoing tanker vessels.
Upon arrival at the receiving port, the liquid is "re-gasified" and delivered by pipelines to customers.
With worldwide consumption and prices of natural gas on the rise, advocates see the liquefied form as an increasingly attractive means of matching remote supplies with energy-starved markets.
The Repsol YPF project would deliver gas from the Camisea field in the Peruvian Amazon to Mexico.
For Mexican officials, current and projected demand justifies the new projects.
Garza said that natural gas consumption in Mexico could grow as much as 50% in the next eight years. The bulk of new supplies, he said, would have to come from imports, as the country's efforts to develop domestic natural gas reserves have lagged.
