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A prized energy source, or potent terror target?
Push to build LNG terminals is under fire
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"Look at the existing safety record [of LNG tankers] - it's sterling, extremely clean," says Martin Edwards of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, a trade group representing companies with current and proposed LNG terminals. "What we often find is that the safety, and lately the security, issues are a kind of shield" that masks opponents' deeper concerns, such as threats to property values.
A plan to build a terminal at the Port of Long Beach is among the furthest along. "This is going to be the safest LNG receiving terminal in the world," Tom Giles, chief of Sound Energy Solutions, a Mitsubishi subsidiary, told the Los Angeles Times in January when describing the concrete and steel tanks it planned to build.
A global boom in LNG
Energy analysts call LNG the "new prize" on the global energy scene. Japan and other energy-poor nations have long imported large amounts of LNG. The US expansion is part of a global boom, with at least 55 new LNG tankers under construction - a one-third increase in the world fleet to more than 200 vessels.
A nontoxic, highly compressed liquid, cooled to -260 degrees F., LNG is piped from tankers into giant storage tanks on shore. Then it is warmed, expanding to a gaseous state 600 times its previous volume, to be piped to power plants and homes.
The greatest risk from LNG, experts say, would be if the super-cold, compressed liquid were to gush out onto open water during a terrorist attack, spread, and then ignite.
"If even one of the five tanks onboard an LNG ship spilled onto the water, the fire it would produce would be up to a half-mile in diameter," says Jerry Havens, a chemical engineer and former director of the Chemical Hazards Research Center at the University of Arkansas. "The thermal radiation ... could burn people a half mile from the fire's edge," says Dr. Havens, who helped write federal standards for estimating the size and intensity of fires involving LNG.
James Fay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor emeritus of mechanical engineering, who some have called the father of LNG hazard theory, has conducted his own study of the consequences of a single tank release from an LNG tanker in Boston Harbor. His calculations of the size of the fire are nearly identical to Havens's.
"One way to think about it is that, if all the fossil-fuel power plants in the US ran full power for five minutes, that's how much energy would burn in just five minutes here if one of those five tanks on one ship blew," he says. "It would be a lot bigger if the whole ship went up - about five times that big."
Public concern isn't limited to terrorism. While one proposed LNG site in Mobile would be less than a mile from the city, the biggest concern is its potential impact on the economy, says Casi Callaway of Mobile Bay Watch, a citizens group.
