from the 
Thursday, March 24
First offshore terminal now operating
Commercial operations kicked off yesterday in the
Gulf of Mexico at the nation's first offshore liquefied
natural gas terminal like those proposed 10 miles
off Gloucester.
The tanker Excelsior docked at underwater buoys
116 miles off the coast of Louisiana last Thursday,
and crews have been doing a series of test
runs since then, Excel-erate Energy Vice President
Rob Bryngelson said.
The first gas to be sent ashore for consumer use
began flowing from the terminal around 9 a.m. yesterday,
he said.
LNG has been offloaded at onshore terminals
in the United States since the early 1970s, but
offshore terminals are new.
It is a major milestone for Excel-erate Energy,
the newly formed Texas company.
"This if the first new terminal in 20 plus
years," Bryngelson said. "This is definitely
a couple of big steps in the direction of getting
increased LNG imports into the United
States. Everything went very smoothly. We're very
pleased."
A group of executives from the El Paso Corporation
formed Excel-erate Energy in 2003 when El Paso
cut its LNG initiative due to credit problems,
Bryngelson said. Excel-erate then bought the technology
for the LNG initiative and built the Gulf of Mexico
offshore terminal.
Bryngelson said the next major move will be building
off Gloucester. That project is still in the approval
phase, however, and has been widely opposed
by Gloucester leaders.
Local officials who oppose two terminals proposed
off Gloucester say just because one tanker has
offloaded at Excelerate's Gulf of Mexico operation
does not mean they are a good idea.
"One day doesn't make history," said
Mayor John Bell. "They're two different sites."
Excelerate Energy and a second Texas-based company,
Tractebel North America, are both vying to build
multi-million dollar terminals southeast of
Gloucester to help meet the demand for natural
gas in the Northeast.
The companies have proposed offshore terminals
that would require putting in two underwater
buoys southeast of Eastern Point in
a triangle between the Stellwagen Bank National
Marine Sanctuary, the Massachusetts Bay Disposal
Site and shipping lanes to Boston. LNG tankers
would dock at the underwater buoys, vaporize
the liquefied natural gas and offload it into
a pipeline buried in the ocean floor.
Fishing industry leaders and city officials widely
oppose the project because they are concerned the
docking facility would disturb fish habitats and
force more fishing ground closures in areas invaluable
to Gloucester's dayboat fleet.
Another key argument for opponents is the
newness of the technology. LNG has never been
offloaded from tankers while still at sea
anywhere in the world.
Excelerate Energy officials developed their
plans for an offshore terminal using technology
for an underwater buoy system that tankers latch
onto to offload oil in the North Sea.
LNG is natural gas that has been cooled to roughly
-260 degrees Fahrenheit, changing the gas to its
liquid state and making it easier to transport
large amounts. LNG has
been offloaded from tankers at an onshore terminal
in Everett since the early 1970s.
At the Everett terminal, LNG tankers do not hook
up to an underwater buoy system. Instead,
giant unloading arms 50 feet tall are extended
over the vessel and pump the LNG from each cargo
tank onboard. The LNG is then pumped into two storage
tanks, and, in turn, pumped into three pipelines
that each have their own vaporizing system.
At offshore terminals, the vaporizing system
is located onboard the tankers, and the LNG is
turned back to gas before it is pumped into the
pipeline through the underwater buoy.
Bell said the newness of the technology and the
impact on the fishing industry and the marine environment
concern him.
"The technology is just one thing," Bell
said. "I think we all have a lot to learn.
What happens down in the Gulf of Mexico should
be used to see if there are lessons to be learned
and build those lessons into the permitting process."
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Thursday,
January 20, 2005
LNG company says offshore site would be secure
A terrorist attack or equipment disaster at
a proposed liquefied natural gas unloading facility
10 miles off Gloucester would not produce a
fire large enough to burn people or buildings
on shore, officials from the Texas company planning
the terminal say.
A detailed report of what would happen if an
LNG tanker at a shoreside unloading facility
were attacked was released in late December.
The report described people and buildings in
Boston burned up to a third of a mile away from
the Everett LNG facility.
There is no study detailing the possible effects
of a similar disaster at an offshore terminal,
like the one proposed by Excelerate Energy LLC
off Gloucester.
If liquefied natural gas were to leak or spill
from a tanker while it was offloading at the
proposed buoy system off Gloucester, the zone
of impact around the spill would be roughly
1.5 miles, Excelerate Energy Vice President
Rob Bryngelson said.
A 160-page report was released Dec. 20 by Sandia
National Laboratories, a government nuclear
weapons lab. The yearlong study provides the
most detailed analysis to date of the potential
public safety impact of a terrorist attack on
an LNG transport tanker.
The report calls for putting in place the most
stringent security measures possible to protect
tankers from terrorist attacks but does not
go as far as prohibiting tankers from carrying
LNG through heavily populated areas.
Excelerate says it is using computer generated
models and consulting think tanks to come up
with a "consequence study" to be included
in its application for the Cape Ann project
to the federal government, which it plans on
filing by May.
"What we've seen is pretty consistent with
the Sandia report," Bryngelson said.
Liquefied natural gas stored in tanks in the
hulls of ships will dock at two underwater buoys
10 miles off Gloucester. The liquified gas would
then be then changed into regular gas by a vaporization
process that can be done aboard the ship. The
gas would then be sent into a pipeline buried
in the ocean floor that connects to consumers
on land.
In the event of a spill or leak, the liquid
natural gas vaporizes as it warms and disperses
into the air. If the concentration of natural
gas in the air is between 5 percent and 15 percent
it catches fire and burns from the outside edges
to the middle.
According to the Sandia report, a pool of LNG
released into the water and then ignited as
it vaporized would create a giant fireball that
would expand outward to a distance twice the
size of the pool itself. Even if that were to
happen, Bryngelson said, it could not harm people
10 miles away onshore.
"Because the fire burns back toward the
source, the fireball becomes quite small," said
Excelerate operations manager Mark Lane.
The Coast Guard enforces a 500-meter clear zone
around the tankers at the unloading facility
and crews aboard the tanker keep a 10-mile watch
at all times, Lane said.
The ships are double-hulled and the tanks of
gas on board are also double-layered. Three
series of automatic shut-down valves also protect
the ship to pipeline off-loading process, Lane
said.
"Obviously, we have to accept the fact that
a collision with a particular angle of attack and
velocity could cause that type of failure," said
Lane, who has been involved in the LNG business
since the late 1970s.
In the worst-case scenario — the largest
spill and the worst weather conditions — the
maximum distance affected by the disaster would
be in the 2.5 mile range, Bryngelson said.
Gloucester Mayor John Bell, who has opposed
Excelerate's plan for an LNG facility from the
start, said the company is contradicting themselves
by claiming that there are minimal safety concerns
10 miles offshore. He reiterated the only other
facility like the one proposed off Gloucester
isn't even operational yet. Excelerate is building
a similar facility 100 miles offshore in the
Gulf of Mexico, which is set to go online sometime
this spring.
Bell said paperwork filed by Excelerate during
the application process for that project outlines
concerns at 10 miles out.
"Why did they go so far off shore? Why
was that their recommendation in the Gulf of
Mexico but not here in Mass. Bay?" Bell
argued.
Gloucester dragger fisherman Joe Orlando said
he doesn't want to rely on the company to provide
critical information about safety.
"This is not about safety at all; this
is all about big money," he said. "If
an accident happens out there we don't know
if it worse or safer. There has been no study
of that whatsoever by anyone outside their company."
Orlando said he was also concerned that an explosion
at the facility would cause a substantial wave
that could wash over Gloucester. Bryngelson
and Lane said they didn't believe a wave would
be possible because the nature of LNG.
"There's a difference between an explosion
and a fire. Natural gas does not explode in
the open environment," Lane said.
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Please click the links below for more
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From
Associated Press:
LNG
Sites Divide Coastal Regions
