Jordan Cove Energy Project
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The Jordan Cove Energy Project was a proposal by
Calgary Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in C ...
-based energy company Pembina to build a
liquefied natural gas Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volume o ...
export terminal within the International Port of
Coos Bay, Oregon Coos Bay () is a city located in Coos County, Oregon, United States, where the Coos River enters Coos Bay on the Pacific Ocean. It shares Coos Bay with the adjacent city of North Bend, Oregon, North Bend. Together, they are often referred to as ...
. The natural gas would have been transported to the terminal by the Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline. The proposal has been met with objections from landowners, Tribes, and commercial entities since 2010 and was cancelled in late 2021.


Facility

The site proposed for the Jordan Cove Energy Project is located on property controlled by the International Port of Coos Bay, which is zoned for industrial development. The facility would consist of two full containment storage tanks, each with a capacity of . It would have a single marine berth for loading liquefied natural gas and a dedicated tractor tug dock. The facility would be located on the north shore of Coos Bay, approximately seven nautical miles from the channel that connects the bay to the Pacific Ocean, and about northwest of North Bend Municipal Airport. The facility is being designed to accommodate about two vessels per week. Each ship will take less than 24 hours to load its cargo. The cost of development at the site is set at $6 billion. The terminal would employ about 60 people, and construction of the terminal and pipeline would employ about 450 people over more than three years


Pipeline

Natural gas would be transported to the Jordan Cove liquefaction terminal by the long Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline. The buried, natural gas pipeline would take a diagonal course, heading from Coos Bay southeast to
Malin, Oregon Malin is a city in Klamath County, Oregon, United States. The population was 805 at the 2010 census. History According to Lewis A. McArthur, Malin was settled September 30, 1909, on land that was formerly at the bottom of Tule Lake by 65 Bohe ...
. The proposal includes four natural gas meter stations, at Jordan Cove; at milepoint 69.7 in Douglas County; at Shady Cove in Jackson County; and at milepoint 230.9 in Klamath County. The pipeline would terminate at the border between Oregon and California, where it would connect with existing pipeline belonging to
Gas Transmission Northwest Gas Transmission Northwest (GTN) is a long natural gas pipeline built in 1961 with a capacity of 2,900 million cubic feet per day. It brings gas from Alberta, Canada, beginning at Kingsgate, British Columbia and passing through Washington and term ...
, Tuscarora Gas, and
Pacific Gas and Electric Company The Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is an American investor-owned utility (IOU). The company is headquartered at Kaiser Center, in Oakland, California. PG&E provides natural gas and electricity to 5.2 million households in the norther ...
, at the proposed Buck Butte, Russell Canyon, and Tule Lake meter stations. The pipeline would cross the Coast Range between Coos Bay and Roseburg, with its central point near
Shady Cove, Oregon Shady Cove is a city in Jackson County, Oregon, United States. The population was 2,904 at the 2010 census. History The city of Shady Cove was incorporated in 1973. Before that, the nearby towns of Trail to the north and Eagle Point to the s ...
. The pipeline route crosses five major rivers: the
Coos Coos may refer to: People *Cowasuck, also known as Cowass or Coös, an Algonquian-speaking Native American tribe in northeastern North America *Coos people, an Indigenous people of the Northwest Plateau in Oregon *Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower ...
, Coquille,
Rogue A rogue is a person or entity that flouts accepted norms of behavior or strikes out on an independent and possibly destructive path. Rogue, rogues, or going rogue may also refer to: Companies * Rogue Ales, a microbrewery in Newport, Oregon * ...
, South Umpqua, and
Klamath Klamath may refer to: Ethnic groups *Klamath people, a Native American people of California and Oregon **Klamath Tribes, a federally recognized group of tribes in Oregon *Klamath language, spoken by the Klamath people Places in the United States * ...
rivers and would cross land owned by the state, the federal government, and private individuals. About 675 private landowners, would be compensated by the pipeline company for the use of their land, with prices set either through negotiation or via the legal process of eminent domain seizure. The cost to construct the pipeline was estimated at $1.5 billion.


Power plant

The first 2009 application included the South Dunes Power Plant, which was a proposed combined cycle natural gas fueled power plant, built to provide power to the liquefaction facility. Located close to US 101 at the East edge of the site, it would have a peaking capacity of 420 MW. Permitting of the facility falls under the authority of the Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council. The later 2013 application removed the separate power plant, in favor of direct gas turbine driven refrigeration compressors. The facility was to be independent of outside power, with an on-site power plant using a steam turbine fed by a combination Heat Recovery Steam Generators (HRSG), recovering heat from the gas turbines, and a natural gas fired boiler.


History

According to ''
PBS Newshour ''PBS News Hour'', previously stylized as ''PBS NewsHour'', is the news division of PBS and an American daily evening news broadcasting#television, television news program broadcast on over 350 PBS Network affiliate#Member stations, member stat ...
'' the original intent was for the facility to be used to import natural gas into the US, prior to the development of the exploitation of petroleum resources through "
fracking Fracking (also known as hydraulic fracturing, fracing, hydrofracturing, or hydrofracking) is a well stimulation technique involving the fracturing of formations in bedrock by a pressurized liquid. The process involves the high-pressure inje ...
". In December 2007, the Jordan Cove Energy Project and the Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline applied for approval from the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates the interstate transmission and wholesale sale of electricity and natural gas and regulates the prices of interstate transport ...
(FERC). An
environmental impact statement An environmental impact statement (EIS), under United States environmental law, is a document required by the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for certain actions "significantly affecting the quality of the human environment". An E ...
for both projects was issued in May 2009. The original developers of the Jordan Cove project are Energy Projects Development Limited. The current lead investor in the Jordan Cove terminal is
Veresen Veresen Inc. was a Calgary, Alberta-based energy infrastructure company with three main lines of business: pipelines, natural gas and power generation. It was a publicly-traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and was known as Fort Chicago E ...
, an energy infrastructure company based in Calgary, Alberta. The investors in the pipeline are Williams and Veresen. FERC approved the project in December 2009. In April 2012, FERC vacated the approval upon notification that the owners would no longer be pursuing an import facility. In May 2013, Jordan Cove filed applications with FERC to construct and operate a
liquefied natural gas Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volume o ...
export facility. In June 2015, the
Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians The Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians of Oregon are a federally recognized Native American tribe of Hanis Coos, Miluk Coos, Lower Umpqua (or Kuitsh), and Siuslaw people in Oregon.Veresen Veresen Inc. was a Calgary, Alberta-based energy infrastructure company with three main lines of business: pipelines, natural gas and power generation. It was a publicly-traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and was known as Fort Chicago E ...
had not demonstrated the need for the project, and that the benefits from the project would not outweigh the harm done to individual landowners to justify the use of
eminent domain Eminent domain, also known as land acquisition, compulsory purchase, resumption, resumption/compulsory acquisition, or expropriation, is the compulsory acquisition of private property for public use. It does not include the power to take and t ...
. On March 25, Veresen announced that they had found a potential buyer for the gas that would be exported, which was a consortium of Japanese utilities, but no contracts were signed. They suggested they appeal the decision by FERC and lost that appeal in December 2016. The project was cancelled in late 2021. In 2025, a new startup, OA Partners LLC, has filed an appeal with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to attempt to reverse the 2016 FERC rejection of the project.


Law Enforcement Response and Surveillance

In 2019, it was revealed by
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
that opponents of Jordan Cove Energy Project were being monitored by the
FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
and other government agencies. A subsequent investigation by
The Intercept ''The Intercept'' is an American left-wing nonprofit news organization that publishes articles and podcasts online. ''The Intercept'' has published in English since its founding in 2014, and in Portuguese since the 2016 launch of the Brazilia ...
and Type Investigations, based on more than 15,000 pages of documents obtained via open records requests, found that Pembina Pipeline was the sole source of funding for a unit in the Coos County sheriff department dedicated to handling security concerns related to Jordan Cove. This included purchasing riot control equipment, monitoring the activities of Jordan Cove opponents, and coordinating intelligence-gathering operations with
private security companies A private security company is a business entity which provides armed or unarmed security services and expertise to clients in the private or public sectors. Overview Private security companies are defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistic ...
working for Pembina. They also funded a two-day training in November 2018, organized by the National Sheriffs’ Association. Despite no evidence of committing crimes, these investigations documented how the environmental and Indigenous groups opposing the pipeline were surveilled by the Oregon TITAN
Fusion Center In the United States, fusion centers are designed to promote information sharing at the federal level between agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Justice, and sta ...
under the pretext of "counterterrorism." In 2021, individuals surveilled by the Fusion Center filed a lawsuit, alleging that the monitoring of activists was illegal.


Reactions

The Jordan Cove LNG project has been long opposed by impacted communities, including landowners, Tribes, commercial fishermen, and more across Southern Oregon for over a decade. In 2018, a poll found 57 percent either strongly opposed or leaned toward opposing the Jordan Cove Energy Project, versus 22 percent who either leaned toward supporting or strongly supported the project. US Senator
Jeff Merkley Jeffrey Alan Merkley (born October 24, 1956) is an American politician who is the junior United States senator from Oregon. He was first elected to the Senate in 2008. A member of the Democratic Party, he served from 1999 to 2009 as the repres ...
and US Representative Peter Defazio publicly opposed this project. Facing widespread opposition and lacking a number of key permits necessary for construction, the project stalled out in 2020. In 2022, Pembina announced that the pipeline and export terminal would not be built, and the project was permanently canceled.


References


External links

*Jordan Cove Energy Project, https://web.archive.org/web/20100512034328/http://jordancoveenergy.com/ *Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline, http://www.pacificconnectorgp.com/ *Citizens Against LNG, http://www.citizensagainstlng.com *Rogue Riverkeeper, http://rogueriverkeeper.org/lng {{coord , 43.425 , -124.269 , type:landmark_region:US-OR_source:googlemapssatellite , display=title Coos Bay, Oregon Energy infrastructure in Oregon Liquefied natural gas plants Proposed liquefied natural gas terminals