There have been two significant developments regarding Oregon LNG this week. The first came on Tuesday when the court ruled that the Port of Astoria should enter into the 30 year lease with DSL and Oregon LNG for the lands on the Skippanon. I asked Oregon LNG CEO
Peter Hansen to comment this morning:
Tom,
This ruling does not specifically force the Port to do anything. However, it does indeed pave the way for future rulings to force the Port's hand. We expect the Port to do the right thing and renew the 30 year lease.
Peter
With that said, it is not likely that the Port will take this ruling as a directive since so much potential revenue is at stake. At this point if the Port were to follow the court suggestion it could be tantamount to admitting that the original lease agreement should stand.
The Port Commission is looking to it's own bottom line and it's responsibility to district constituents in taking actions to resolve the Skippanon ownership issues that Commissioner Floyd Holcom has brought forward. They've even hired an attorney who, until his current term ends, sits on the board of Columbia River Keepers (the same organization whose volunteers were quite active in the recent recall campaigns against Commission Chair Hazen and former
Commissioner Ann Samuelson) to pursue it's claims and handle the suit against Oregon LNG. For his part, that attorney told us that his reason for joining that organization years ago came from concerns over the long overdue clean up of the Willamette. It still seems to represent a conflict.
