Terror fears could force U.S. gas offshore-experts
biz.yahoo.com
By Pete Harrison and Manuela Badawy
Friday November 16, 6:11 am Eastern Time
LONDON, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Fears that terrorists could use gas tankers as floating missiles against U.S. cities, just as they did with airliners on September 11, could force the United States to move its gas import terminals offshore.
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``I want to make sure LNG (liquefied natural gas) shipments into Cove Point and other American terminals are thoroughly considered a national security issue, not just an energy issue,'' Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski told Congress last week.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is due to meet on Friday to hear arguments against re-opening Cove Point Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant in Chesapeake Bay, southern Maryland.
Security experts said Mikulski's worries were justified.
They have over 1,000 acres of storage there in Chesapeake Bay, and it's kind of dangerous, because ... people live there," William Callahan of New York-based maritime security firm Unitel told Reuters on Thursday.
``From a safety point of view it's a good idea to move gas offshore,'' he added.
Floating LNG terminals have never been built before, but the engineering consultancy American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) told Reuters it was currently helping the industry perfect the technology.
Last Month, FERC approved a plan by Williams Cos (NYSE:WMB - news) to re-open Cove Point, despite concerns that the facility could be subject to sabotage that would threaten the nearby Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant.
``If LNG tankers are allowed on the Chesapeake... a nightmare scenario could become reality,'' said Mikulski.
``I cannot believe you would give this approval on the one month anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America,'' she wrote in a letter to FERC chairman Patrick Henry Wood.
CATASTROPHIC SCENARIO
``The catastrophic scenario is an LNG ship just coming into harbour and an aircraft flown into it, or an LNG ship taken over by the crew and crashed into a terminal in a mass suicide,'' Richard Bethell, director of Global Maritime Security Systems, told Reuters in a recent interview.
Mikulski said: ``One source for LNG -- the source for gas previously delivered to Cove Point -- is Algeria. Algeria is home to the Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, a terrorist group with international reach.''
Maritime security consultant Tim Spicer of London-based Trident Maritime said Osama bin Ladin's Al Qaeda network, which Washington holds responsible for the September 11 attacks, seemed to be aware of shipping's vulnerability to attack.
He said this was illustrated by the death of 17 U.S. servicemen in October 2000, when suicide bombers rammed an explosive-laden dinghy into the hull of the American warship USS Cole.
ABS consultant Jim Gaughan told Reuters that one of the key problems of unloading supercooled LNG was that at -161 degrees celsius it was too cold to put through flexible cryogenic hoses.
``We use hard arms with knuckle joints, but there's a limitation on their range of movement,'' he said. Gaughin said this created problems when the arm was stretched between two moving objects such as a ship and a floating terminal.
The consequences of a spill are severe. ``If you have LNG spilling onto the steel hull or deck it turns brittle as glass and you'll get brittle fracture,'' he said.
``These problems are not insurmountable,'' he added. ``Our people are doing work on telescopic joints right now.''
Putting politics aside, Gaughan estimated that new terminals for the U.S. could be designed, built and delivered by 2004. |
