Ventura County residents face a choice between freezing in the dark and dying in a fireball.

Or so you might conclude from the arguments framing the fight over liquefied natural gas imports into Southern California. For nearly a year, since Ventura County was swept up by the nationwide resurgence of interest in LNG, the debate has bounced like a pinball between scenarios of crisis and catastrophe.

Proponents of LNG imports, such as energy companies and business groups, warn that California's economy will be crippled unless the state taps new gas supplies. Opponents counter that LNG tankers and terminals, handling flammable natural gas that is shipped as a super-cooled liquid, would unnecessarily expose coastal residents to mortal danger.

Both arguments contain elements of truth, but the debate over LNG is about much more than public safety and energy resources, and it reaches well beyond the borders of Ventura County.

The fight over LNG will decide the fate of billions of dollars in investment by energy companies. The debate raises questions about the reliability of the nation's fossil-fuel resources and how best to regulate them.

The struggle over LNG imports will help determine whether California and the nation chart a new energy course, or follow the same path with gas in the 21st century that they did with oil in the 20th: increasingly dependent on foreign supplies.

It also will influence the fate of scores of communities and the people who call them home, not only Oxnard and Malibu, unlikely front-line comrades in California's current battle over LNG, but also blue-collar suburbs in Massachusetts, where people ponder the consequences of a terrorist attack on Boston Harbor. The conflict touches bayou towns on Louisiana's Gulf Coast, where families clamor for the jobs LNG brings; and rural outposts in Wyoming, where residents worry the nation's growing appetite for energy will doom wildlife, ruin the landscape and forever change the region's culture.

The LNG debate also fans the flames of a dispute over the balance of governmental power that traces its roots to the birth of the nation. It makes people ask whether coincidence or something more sinister is responsible for the preponderance of LNG terminal proposals near working-class communities, many of them poor, some of them with large populations of ethnic or racial minorities.

"I think these are communities where people are desperate," said former Oxnard Mayor Manny Lopez, suggesting leaders of LNG companies have searched for sites where the people won't mobilize and fight back. "I think realistically we have been targeted."

Industry leaders say the only thing they're targeting are locations that offer congenial sea conditions and access to existing pipeline networks.

"It doesn't get any better than this," said Crystal Energy President Paul Soanes, referring to the Santa Barbara Channel where his company wants to operate a station called Clearwater Port.

If Soanes wins, and LNG comes to Ventura County, Shirley and Larry Godwin will leave. They moved to Oxnard 43 years ago and raised their three children there, but they believe that a home with LNG isn't really home at all.

"We know too much. We know about the earthquakes. We know what can happen," said Shirley Godwin, worrying not only about LNG spills but also about welcoming an industry that could alter Oxnard's character. "It'll be known as an industrial area that has LNG terminals. We'll lose everything."

The divisions between the two sides are stark. Sorting through the conflicting claims of activists and industry promoters is not easy, but it's the task some participants in the debate encourage as a way of making sensible decisions about the future of California and the nation.

Energy crisis versus catastrophe

According to the companies hoping to build LNG import terminals off the Ventura County coastline, California will confront disaster unless it takes immediate steps to boost its energy supply. Consumer prices will soar, electricity blackouts will occur, and industries that rely on affordable gas for fuel and raw materials will move to other states or countries, taking thousands of jobs with them.

"California now faces a severe energy shortage," Crystal Energy warns on its Web site and in a brochure distributed throughout Ventura County in support of its proposal. Under the heading, "A Looming Crisis," the company warns that "as the natural gas shortage drives the price of electricity up, business and jobs are disappearing from California."

LNG is conventional natural gas that has been chilled to about 260 degrees below zero, at which point it turns to liquid and shrinks to one-six-hundredth of its original volume, making it feasible to transport by ship. By building LNG terminals, the companies argue, California can tap an abundant global supply, lowering prices and stabilizing the state's power grid.

According to the most vocal project opponents, however, LNG importation could unleash an apocalyptic cascade of tragedy and destruction: terrorists seizing control of tankers or attacking terminals to ignite conflagrations that incinerate coastal communities, pipeline explosions that destroy schools and neighborhoods, industrial degradation of priceless coastal scenery.

"A fiery inferno would engulf everything for 30 miles, incinerating communities ranging from Santa Barbara, Montecito, Carpinteria, Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo, Port Hueneme, Point Mugu, Malibu and Santa Monica," Oxnard attorney Tim Riley warns on his widely visited anti-LNG Web site. It features a cartoonish image of a bright-orange fireball in the skies over Channel Islands Harbor.

Neither extreme is accurate, according to independent energy analysts and safety experts.

Domestic natural gas production is not keeping pace with U.S. demand, but the gap so far is a small one. It's even smaller in California, where gas demand has fallen 20 percent in the past four years and is not projected to rise significantly for two decades.

According to a recent study by Sandia National Laboratories, the most extreme scenarios described by LNG safety skeptics -- vast fires that destroy everything within a 30-mile radius of a tanker terminal -- are highly improbable. There are dangers associated with LNG transport, and the consequences of a major leak and fire in an urban setting could be severe, the report warns, but the risks can be reduced through precautions, including locating terminals far from population centers. "Not every site is a good LNG site," said energy analyst Mike Hightower, part of the Sandia team. "But not every site is a bad site, either."

Projects on the horizon

To most Ventura County residents, the proposals that have ignited such wide-ranging debate would be nearly invisible, steel blips on a horizon already dotted with hulking oil platforms.

Texas firm Crystal Energy proposes converting Platform Grace, once used to tap oil and gas deposits, into a receiving terminal for tankers carrying LNG. The liquid would be warmed at the terminal, turning it back into a gas, and piped through a 36-inch line crossing 12.6 miles of the sea floor. The pipeline would come ashore at Reliant Energy's Mandalay generating plant, proceed underground through Oxnard and connect to a Southern California Gas Co. facility on Center Road in Somis. There would be no LNG storage at the terminal.

The other project off the Ventura County coast is proposed by BHP Billiton, an Australian mining firm with global interests in coal, diamonds, nickel, silver, copper, iron, oil and gas. Its Cabrillo Port would be a floating terminal, essentially a moored tanker 938 feet long. Its three spherical storage tanks would rise about 80 feet above the waterline and hold 72 million cubic meters of liquefied gas.

Cabrillo Port would convert LNG into gas and send it to shore by a pair of pipelines crossing 21 miles of sea floor and burrowing beneath Ormond Beach at that site's Reliant plant. The pipes would merge there at a metering station, which would be connected by a new 36-inch line to the same Gas Co. facility in Somis.

Each port would receive two to three tanker shipments a week and would be capable of delivering 800 million cubic feet of gas to shore each day, more than half the volume consumed directly by residential customers. If they both try to connect to the Gas Co. system, it will require a significant and costly expansion of the company's transmission lines.

The potential collision of gas imports in Somis illustrates a broader issue. There are about 40 proposals for LNG import terminals in North America, including six that could serve the West Coast: one in Oregon, three in Southern California and two in Baja California. Energy analysts don't see a need for nearly that many.

Racing to be first

LNG imports currently account for about 2 percent of the nation's gas supply. That's likely to increase to 15 percent by 2025, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

According to the National Petroleum Council, the increased load could be handled by expansion of four existing terminals -- one each in Maryland, Massachusetts, Georgia and Louisiana -- plus construction of seven to nine more distributed among the nation's Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts. Since that report was produced, a fifth U.S. terminal has opened for business off the Gulf Coast.

"I think the companies are absolutely desperate to be the first one out of the gate," said Santa Barbara environmentalist Susan Jordan, complaining about a gold-rush mentality. "This is not something you rush into willy-nilly. This should be a thoughtful, coherent process."

Terminal proponents tout increased imports as a way of saving consumers money by boosting supplies and introducing competition. However, energy analysts say building too many terminals could glut the market, causing prices to fall so much that LNG would not be economically competitive with gas from domestic wells.

The West Coast market can't absorb more than the capacity of one or two LNG import terminals over the next decade, the analysts said. Crystal Energy's Soanes puts the figure at two to three terminals and says imports probably won't have a major effect on gas costs. Energy companies will back away from LNG plans rather than build expensive plants that end up standing idle.

It's unlikely that either of the Ventura County terminal proposals will be first out of the gate. San Diego-based Sempra Energy has received permits and is nearly ready to begin construction of an LNG terminal 14 miles north of Ensenada in Baja California. That port will have a capacity of 1 billion cubic feet of gas a day and is expected to begin operation in 2008.

About half that gas will be delivered to Mexico, according to the company. The other half will be available for sale to California customers, including Sempra's corporate subsidiary, Southern California Gas Co.

With 19.5 million customers in its 20,000-square-mile service area, which includes Ventura County, it's the biggest gas utility in the nation.

In contrast, Crystal Energy's Clearwater Port is still in the application stage. BHP Billiton's Cabrillo Port is awaiting approval of its draft environmental documents.

The relatively slow pace of the approval process in California is at the root of one of the most wide-ranging controversies swirling around the LNG boom, one that pits federal lawmakers and regulators against their state and local counterparts.

A struggle for control

LNG terminals must run a complicated regulatory gantlet imposed by local, state and federal agencies.

The energy industry has been lobbying heavily over the past four years to streamline that process by centralizing authority in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The Center for Public Integrity reported last year that, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, executives and lobbyists for ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and other energy companies active in the LNG trade met privately at least 83 times from 2001 to 2004 with FERC commissioners, after which FERC asserted unilateral authority over LNG siting.

The California Public Utilities Commission challenged that decision in court, but the case may have been rendered moot by the federal energy bill that emerged from Congress in late July. The legislation, which President Bush signed Aug. 8, grants FERC "exclusive authority to approve or deny an application for the siting, construction, expansion or operation of an LNG terminal," onshore or in state waters.

The bill does not affect the two terminal proposals off the Ventura County coast. They would be in federal waters and are governed by the Deepwater Port Act, which gives the governor of a neighboring state the power to veto LNG terminals in waters beyond the state's 3-mile limit.

Opponents of LNG development condemn the effort to bypass state and local authority, which remained in the energy bill despite coastal lawmakers' efforts to remove it.

"Cutting the states out of any real role in LNG siting decisions is dangerous and unwarranted," said Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, whose district includes Ventura, Oxnard and Port Hueneme. "California has an obligation to look after the safety of its citizens, which the FERC wouldn't even consider. This is a power grab by the administration to ignore health, safety and environmental issues associated with siting an LNG terminal off our coasts."

Local leaders complain just as bitterly about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's comment after a speech in Alhambra that he supported an offshore LNG terminal near Oxnard.

"I'd like our governor not to say he's in favor of it until the process is completed," said Malibu Mayor Andy Stern, who thinks Schwarzenegger jumped the gun by not waiting for a final environmental impact report.

Stern said the current draft doesn't provide real answers to communities like Malibu, enraged at the specter of an offshore terminal 14 miles from the Ventura-Los Angeles counties line.

"Our town is not interested in nice little platitudes that we're doing our best to protect the health and interests of residents of Oxnard and Malibu," he said. "That does nothing."

Opposing views

The arguments over LNG divide neighbors, city councils and community groups. Often, they reveal a paradoxical attitude toward risk.

Walk through the south Oxnard neighborhood closest to the proposed pipelines and a retiree in a mobile home thinks the decision boils down to the nation's need for energy. He wants LNG. But a neighbor puttering in his yard --apparently unfazed by the fact that high-pressure gas lines already run beneath nearly every street in his city -- says that if an LNG terminal comes, he won't let his grandchildren use the beach because it would be dangerous.

Some people examine the arguments and see fear shoving Ventura County and Southern California away from energy resources they believe are desperately needed.

"I just happen to believe we have to stop talking out of both sides of our mouth," said Ventura County Supervisor Judy Mikels of Simi Valley, noting much opposition focuses on the belief terminals 10.5 and 14 miles from land would pose dangers to people onshore. "I think it's based on irrational emotionalism. I have not seen anything from anyone that makes me want to yell 'The sky is falling. The sky is falling.' "

Even groups traditionally unified against fossil fuels are divided on the issue.

"I think I'm the only environmentalist who's speaking out in favor of this," said actor Ed Begley Jr., who has lent his name to the campaign supporting BHP Billiton's LNG proposal.

The former Ojai resident may be better known for his activism and his electric car than his movies and television shows. He's part-owner of a Palm Springs wind farm and installed solar roof panels on his home in the 1980s.

Now in Studio City, he worries not enough people use renewable energy. He sees LNG as better than the more-polluting alternative.

"I'm saying no to new coal. When you say no to one thing, you have to say yes to something else," he said. "I just want to keep the lights on."

Alternatives to LNG

Critics of LNG say there's a better way to keep the lights on than by increasing imports of fossil fuel,a course the United States has pursued in meeting its soaring demand for crude oil. California, they argue, can eliminate the need to import LNG by pursuing the conservation, efficiency and alternative-energy strategies outlined in the state's formal energy plan. That plan calls for 20 percent of electricity purchases to be from renewable or alternative sources by 2017.

At the very least, LNG critics suggest, California should conduct a comprehensive analysis of its energy needs --including the potential for savings and alternative supplies -- before committing itself to LNG imports.

"If California is careful and goes about this analysis in a deliberate, considered manner, these LNG proposals will collapse," said Mark Massara, director of California coastal programs for the Sierra Club.

"The only way they will get them is if there's a rush to judgment."

Proponents of LNG, however, contend that even if opponents manage to block the proposed terminals off the Ventura County coast, gas imported as LNG will make its way to California.

The terminals, along with their economic benefits and environmental effects, will simply be displaced to Mexico or the Gulf Coast, where local opposition is weaker and regulation is less stringent.

"Projects are going to be built because the world market is just that -- a world market," said Rick Morrow, Southern California Gas Co.'s vice president for customer service. "Supplies are going to seek out demand."

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