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Dutch IGCC pioneers chalk up pain and gain Emergency response is behind schedule in the European public sector A new refining industry in Europe's Asian Corridor Commission proposes milestone energy proposal Replace fuel oil with distillate? Cancelled projects will sustain margins “Marine distillate not fuel oil from 2010” Branson's biofuels megastore You heard it here first: refinery CO2 storage a reality in Norway Buncefield 2: Investigation critical Where now for Swedish Class 1 diesel My slow awakening to climate change The luckiest motorist alive Safety row goes on over Europe's largest LNG terminal New WHO guidelines on city air quality put focus on diesel Would LNG really 'evaporate harmlessly' in an accident? Another lesson in the thermobaric bomb Spare a thought for the oil-rich But will the good times keep on rolling? Carbon storage and the zero emissions refinery Everything just changed E85 and high octane gasolines The problem of small-minded young engineers New Permit Regulations Biodiesel newbuilds and a new green superfuel Spilled wine and our split industry Drilling down into the prospects for IGCC The beginning of the start of the end of oil | LNG spill safety: Don’t let the wool be pulled over anybody’s eyes – by anyone The Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry is growing explosively around us. Is it exploding safely? Is it moving into mainland Europe in a way that will be acceptable to European society? Whether they all know it or not, for Europeans there’s a lot riding on the success of LNG. For its industries, for jobs, for energy security, Europe needs LNG to be a runaway success. Equally, the operators, the shippers, the importers have made massive commitments of cash, technology and organisational resources. So far the numbers look promising. I hesitate to repeat the statistics of the phenomenal expansion of LNG which HP has covered at length. Let’s just say US $14.5 billion of capital investment on import terminals alone – 37 of them worldwide – is being committed by 2009. There’s certainly no doubt that we need more natural gas. It’s not a particularly thrilling prospect then that Europe’s energy policy relies as heavily as it does on gas from Russia. It seems that country is willing to flex its resource-rich muscles, if the price hikes and pipeline ‘failures’ beleaguering some of its West-leaning neighbours are anything to go by. Be that as it may, Europe clearly needs LNG to diversify its supply of gas. But then many would contend that Europe clearly needs nuclear energy. However, many European peoples, like the British, remain deeply sceptical about that. The country I’m writing from, Sweden, a former leader in nuclear science, shut down a functioning, modern reactor just before Christmas (and is intending to close its entire nuclear capacity). The locals – who by the way pay €1000 per cubic metre (US $1400/metric tonne) for retail heating oil – celebrated with a firework display. Why? Because they don’t think nuclear power is safe. Now some international companies are building what will be Europe’s largest LNG terminal in Wales. There are a number of smaller projects across Europe. A variety of people have what I would consider to be serious specific concerns about how safely unloading is going to be conducted at the flagship project in Milford Haven. But to give the operating company a fair chance to respond fully to those, I’ll return to that matter in a subsequent column. In the broadest of terms, then, how safe is LNG? And is it less safe than people are being led to understand? Does it burn? Is lighter than air? Fortunately, I can ask stupid questions like that, because, unlike some of my more esteemed colleagues at HP, I’m essentially a layman. First, I checked the official line and it left me feeling a little uneasy. By the time I’d spoken to a range of industry PR people, concerned locals, industry associations, firefighting people and so on, I was able to put my finger on that sense of unease. Imagine you’re choosing an electrician to rewire your house and you raise safety. One says: “Electricity’s a very safe way to power a home, don’t worry about it’. Do you, like me, feel a lot more reassured by the second who says this: “Electricity is potentially deadly. I worry about that a lot, so that you don’t have to’?
Now examine the following opening statement from a US Department of Energy website* on LNG. “As a liquid, LNG cannot explode or burn. If LNG is spilled, the resulting LNG vapor will warm, become lighter than air and disperse with the prevailing wind.” I invite you to read it in full. Feeling reassured? A spokesperson for an operator company is asked about the volatility of LNG in a Q&A in a local newspaper and responds: “LNG evaporates quickly and disperses rapidly because it is lighter than air.” That message permeates organisations charged with public safety. A local resident wrote to an Emergency Planning Officer at a county council in Wales and asked about the consequences of an LNG spill. The reply includes: “LNG when spilled will quickly evaporate and form a visible cloud of condensing water vapour that makes it look like fog. Because it is lighter than air it disperses quickly and is not easy to ignite.” Now, I’m not saying that LNG is not safe. But I do wonder whether, in their nervousness to quickly usher in a more secure LNG era, some authorities and some companies may be consciously or unconsciously obscuring the facts. Tony Cox is an enthusiastic advocate of oil industry safety culture and the LNG industry’s ‘magnificent’ carrier vessels. He has 30 years experience in LNG and risk management. He works today as an independent consultant with SafetyCraft Ltd. As well as the condensing water mentioned by the emergency planning officer, he’s quick to point out that an LNG vapour cloud also contains methane, ethane and air. He feels the industry is letting itself down by allowing myths about ‘harmless dispersal’ of leaked LNG to be promulgated on its behalf. “It’s just not true,” he says. “This is where the industry has misunderstood the physics. They assume pure methane getting to ambient temperature and being buoyant, but it’s the temperature of the cooled mixture – mostly comprising cooled air – that matters. These clouds are unquestionably dense.” Dr Cox says that in all the spill trials he’s aware of except one, a very wide, long and shallow vapour cloud has resulted. “In Shell’s S.S. Gadila LNG carrier cargo jettison trials in the late 1970s, 193m3 of liquid LNG was released and resulted in a visible cloud 2000m long, 550m wide and 12m deep. The flammable part was about 800m long,” he says. Would it burn? “If you had a rapid leak from a 25,000m3 tank aboard a vessel you could foresee a plume of a couple of miles which could remain for 30 minutes,” he says. “If that cloud is over a populated area it will have ignited, causing a devastating flash fire in the vapour cloud with relatively small, localised explosions as and where the vapour may have entered confined spaces like drains or houses.” The LNG industry cites its safety record, and on face value it’s almost without flaw in the last 40 years of operations. But this column hasn’t questioned that. To be anything other than explicit about the physical risks associated with a major new energy resource is daring. Some would say reckless. * http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/oilgas/storage/lng/feature/howsafeisit.html | |||||||
Download Energy Industry Resumé with work samples Profile: Tim Lloyd Wright MA Here you'll find a brief profile of my work with international energy, transport and associated environmental issues. Energy trends articles You heard it here first: refinery CO2 storage a reality in Norway From the archive... Over-processed fuel leaves oil tankers adrift | ||||||||
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