Letters From Readers

I would encourage you to use more reliable sources than Tim Riley for your information on LNG. "Re-gasified LNG" is simply natural gas, which is already piped through most communities in this country, at high pressure for interstate and long distance transmission and low pressure for distribution. There is no difference in the hazard if it comes from LNG. Of course, some LNG facilities will require additional pipelines, which need to be sited properly (according to DOT regulations).

Also, the results for the BHP Billiton facility off California were extremely conservative (i.e., overestimated risk) because they knew they were 11 or 12 miles offshore. They did not care about making more accurate predictions and defending them, they still have no impact on people on shore. The assumption that a 300,000 cubic meter tank fails catastrophically probably does not make sense, even for emergency planning purposes.

Also, for Freeport McMoran, you got it backwards:
"But, that request may eventually be approved because Freeport decided to use a more expensive -- and considered more effective, too -- environmental procedure known as open-loop closed loop vaporization to satisfy policymakers there."
They agreed to abandon open loop, which cools off seawater, although the effects on sea life are not necessarily well understood. It really is not an environmental procedure; it is a design option for providing heat to vaporize the LNG.
If you have future needs for reliable LNG input, I would be happy to assist you by reviewing information or answering questions.

Myron L. Casada
Director - Risk Services
ABS Consulting

I am saddened by your article, which seems to add credibility to the propaganda spouted by LNGDanger.com. While much of what they say is true, they definitely spin it to the point of being sensationalistic garbage. Full disclosure is that I work in the energy industry and have several LNG clients. What I think is criminal is that we as a society have chosen to mandate emissions that don't allow other fossil fuels to be burned and then we won't develop supplies of gas whether pipeline or LNG. I suppose I am happy that this drives up costs so alternatives become more attractive, but at some point the economy won't sustain it. I also find it amusing that people choose to single out LNG when there is gasoline and oil all over the place in far larger quantities. Please try to disperse facts and not sensationalism. It discredits other things you say when you disperse this kind of propaganda.
 

Randell Drane, PE

Your article, "LNG Concerns Hitting Home", completely misses the main issue related to importing LNG, energy security. The reason for the big push for importing LNG is because North American natural gas production has peaked (in 2001) and is now in permanent decline. According to a report commissioned by the U.S. Army, "Energy Trends and Their Implications for U.S. Army Installations," global natural gas production will peak around 2030 and then go into permanent decline:
http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=A440265&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf
Between now and then we would become as dependent on imported LNG as we now are on imported oil. This dependence would have similar consequences of volatile prices, erratic supplies, involvement with unsavory regimes and radical political movements and increasing conflict and wars.

The report also projects that if we replace oil and natural gas with synthetic fuels from coal, global coal production will peak and then go into permanent decline in about 50 years.

A much better long-term approach is to invest heavily into efficiency and conservation and rapidly switch to sustainable domestic energy sources. I favor renewables. Others favor nuclear.

Michael Winkler
Schatz Energy Research Center
 

Your piece on LNG overlooks a key argument against more LNG terminals; namely, do we need more natural gas as a fuel source? This is a topic that has been debated at length in Energy Pulse's own web pages at: http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=1262
 

You write: "The choices are more pipelines or more LNG facilities." This dichotomy is patently false. The choices include renewables and energy efficiency to substitute for additional natural gas demand.
 

The potential for renewables and energy efficiency to substitute for natural gas demand in California was examined in comprehensive detail in the Community Environmental Council's report at the address above. Our conclusion: if California simply meets its own mandates and goals, we won't need any LNG import terminals in California. Similar analysis might find the same for the nation as a whole, but no one to date has performed that analysis.
 

Tam Hunt
Energy Program Director
Community Environmental Council
 

How is it that countries around the globe can build and operate LNG terminals safely, but the mention of it for the US is suddenly a unique problem? For one, the Alabama governor should get out of his office chair, get on a plane and go visit some of the large LNG terminals in other countries. Find out how they manage to do it without all the typical, politically motivated US paranoia. This is not something new or exotic; it has been around for years.
As for the nominee to FERC, haven't we studied this to death already? Hasn't the Alaska natural gas pipeline already been delayed for 30 years while gas prices go through the roof?
 

Gene Voci
Manager, Design Engineering

 

Regarding the heightened cost of LNG to the local (southern New England) area, please be aware of our alternatives, which do not require onshore LNG terminals blocking key bridge, highway, water, or EMT traffic:

1. Hess/Weaver's Cove LNG would have to build or lease an entire fleet of 725-foot LNG carriers to satisfy current requirements. We would certainly be paying for that fleet, as opposed to the "heightened cost" of the pipelines.

2. Duke, which wins no matter who loses, intends to expand existing pipelines from Canada to New England, and seeks FERC blessings.

3. Excelerate Energy, which plans an OFFSHORE terminal ten miles off
Gloucester MA, using a twin-buoyed system to assure steady flow, will be on line, piping revaporized gas into an eight-mile Duke undersea pipeline into the existing New England grid by late 2007 or early 2008. No huge extra costs there, but there is the "pipeline" cost of transporting LNG from Trinidad or Algeria.

4. Consider the "heightened cost" of an LNG industrial accident or terror attack in narrow Narragansett Bay in the second most densely populated part of the U.S.

5. LNG as an enterprise has a limited shelf life of no more than 30-40 years, to be replaced by alternative sources.

Jerry M. Landay
Board, SAVE BRISTOL HARBOR