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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (12734)	4/28/2004 8:38:15 AM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

The Chevron-Texaco statement, not really a study, makes two claims: 1.) There has never been a fire when an LNG tanker has leaked. How wonderfully fortunate. 2.) Quest Consultants estimate that a leak of 25 cubic meters (a tiny fraction of an LNG tanker cargo) would take 37 minutes to burn from a 5 meter hole. Having worked as a Chevron employee obtaining project approvals, I am inclined to believe these statements as far as they go. But you need to go a lot further to demonstrate safety in a populated environment. While natural gas is lighter than air, LNG is distinctly heavier than air and disperses along the ground or water over a great distance before vaporizing. The initial volume and flow rate are the primary factors which determine the distance it travels. A total loss of containment for one LNG tanker would release a wave of LNG over an area of 20 to 30 square miles before vaporizing. I worked for PG&E Gas Transmission one summer in college and saw and learned about the results of some LNG pipeline accidents along the main trunk-line from Canada through California. It's important to realize that automatic valves greatly limit the release of LNG from a damaged pipeline to an amount insignificant compared to that carried by a tanker. In one case, a backhoe struck a buried LNG pipeline. The claw bit a 3/4" nick part way through the pipeline. The gas pressure created a nine foot long rip in the 1.75" thick steel pipeline. The backhoe landed on the operator 300 yards away. In another case, a pipeline leak released LNG which flowed down the gentle slope of a farm field incinerating 64 PG&E pipeline workers, their equiptment and several farm buildings. There was absolutely nothing left of the trucks and heavy equipment, let alone the humans. When I worked for Chevron, I was very successful because I saw an important part of my job was heading-off poorly conceived internal ideas before they became a reality. LNG terminals in populated areas is one of those.

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (12734)	4/28/2004 9:23:10 AM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

The Quest study commisioned by Chevron-Texaco holds another interesting fact I didn't mention. An LNG leak from that 5 meter hole from one 25,000 cubic meter cell will travel laterally along the ground for 2.5 miles before reaching the lower limit of flammability on a windless day (page 23). netl.doe.gov The study does not do the trivial math for you, so I will. This is a 5 mile diameter or 7.85 square miles incinerated by the major rupture of one cell on an LNG tanker. At this point I might ask Mr Quillen why they are planning on an accident which ruptures only a single cell. He of course would answer that they don't plan to have any accidents. I suspect the full accident or sabotage potential is far greater than the 20 or 30 square miles I recalled. I don't think most people could have any idea of the pressure and potential thermal energy represented by an LNG tanker. LNG tankers are perfectly fine for remote uninhabited islands in northwestern Australia, but not for populated areas.

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (12734)	4/28/2004 9:51:15 AM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

This document gets even funnier the more I read. How about this lovely note from page 18, A remote (downwind) ignition of a plume in the flammable portion of the vapor cloud would result in a relatively slow (subsonic) burn back to the spill pool. How wonderful, the fire will spread somewhat slower than the speed of sound. When an LNG leak, with a ten mile radius reaches a point of ignition, the flames will take more than 60 seconds to travel the ten miles back to the tanker. Very controlled, very reassuring. Definitely something to be filed under "What were you thinking?" What happens to the other cells on the LNG tanker when the flames reach the tanker sixty seconds later? Do you have any idea what magnitude of disaster this report spells out if there were buildings or humans within ten or twenty miles of this leak? Everything vaporized!