Liberty scraps offshore liquid gas terminal plan

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) -- A company that proposed building a liquefied natural gas terminal off the central New Jersey coast has withdrawn its application, saying it will start over on a new plan in the future.

Liberty Natural Gas LLC had applied to the federal Maritime Administration and the Coast Guard to build a facility 16 miles off Asbury Park.

But Gov. Chris Christie vetoed the plan in February 2011, saying it was too risky to the state's crucial tourism and fishing industries.

The company kept pressing forward with the plan. But in an April 10 letter to regulators, it noted it had made so many changes to the proposal that a new application would be needed.

"This is a victory for the ocean and for the thousands of citizens and scores of organizations that fought for five years against this wrongful proposal," said Cindy Zipf, executive director of the Clean Ocean Action environmental group. "With Governor Christie's firm opposition, this project was dead in the water. It is about time they faced reality and withdrew (or) terminated the project. It's over for now, but they are lurking and may be back."

Indeed, the company made clear it still plans to move forward with a new version of the proposal at some point.

"Liberty completely redesigned its project, including by scaling down its size from four buoys to two, eliminating the onshore pipeline, changing the project location and configuration to site the project exclusively offshore, and redesigning its construction and techniques to substantially reduce seabed impacts," the company wrote in its letter to regulators.

Because it had made so many changes to its initial application, Liberty withdrew it and intends to submit a new one once surveys and plans are completed.

Liberty's plan was the last of three proposed offshore gas projects in New Jersey waters to remain under consideration. ExxonMobil had proposed a floating gas terminal called BlueOcean Energy about 20 miles off the coast of Manasquan, and The Atlantic Sea Island Group wanted to build a 63-acre artificial island nearly 20 miles off Sandy Hook for a liquefied natural gas port called "Safe Harbor Energy."

Liberty said its facility would rest on the ocean floor when it's not being used, and would be far enough offshore so that it would not be visible to beachgoers, even when it was being utilized. It had hoped to have the project up and running by 2014.

Read more:
Liberty scraps offshore liquid gas terminal plan