“The classification of the application as complete by the US Coast Guard and the City of Los Angeles is an important step in the permitting process, and signals the beginning of the environmental assessment of the project,” Woodside said this morning.

Woodside Natural Gas Inc, a wholly-owned US subsidiary of Woodside Petroleum, lodged its application with the US Coast Guard and the City of Los Angeles in August 2006.

The OceanWay project would see LNG converted back to natural gas at sea, on board a regasification tanker which would unload its cargo through two underwater buoys 45km off the Los Angeles coast.

The buoys would be connected to undersea pipelines feeding into the Southern California pipeline infrastructure near Los Angeles International Airport.

“When ships are not moored to the buoys to unload their cargo, no offshore structure will be visible,” Woodside Natural Gas said.

The US Coast Guard and City of Los Angeles expect to announce the date and time of the environmental review public scoping hearing within 30 days.

Earlier this year, Californian authorities rejected BHP Billiton’s proposed Cabrillo Port LNG terminal, which was admittedly very different from Woodside’s scheme.

Rejection of OceanWay could spell the end of the dream of selling Australian LNG to the US.