Fears raised about hazards of shipping natural gas

An attack on a ship carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) would produce intense fire that would burn nearby buildings, damage steel tanks and cause blistering burns on people within 30 seconds, according to a new US Government report.

The analysis by the Energy Department's Sandia National Laboratory is the first federally funded study to look at the consequences of an attack against a gas carrier. The report appeared to support the concerns of some US politicians and consumer groups who say new liquefied gas import terminals should not be near cities.

Dozens of new terminals have been proposed for the US Gulf Coast and East and West Coasts to help meet rising natural gas demand.

In New Zealand Genesis Energy and Contact Energy, which have large investments in gas-fired generation, are looking at importing LNG as a backstop option if new gas fields are not found fairly soon.

Even with the development of the Pohokura and Kupe natural gas fields and the likely end of petrochemical production by Methanex, they say the exhaustion of the giant Maui field will leave a widening gap between gas demand and supply from 2008.

In the US, there are mounting safety concerns surrounding LNG.

"The results of the study are very sobering, and it should give everyone reason to make certain that we do not build new LNG facilities in or near a densely populated area," said Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.

"It exposes serious weaknesses in the way we build these vessels and immense challenges to the public safety community who are tasked with protecting these ships and the terminals."

Markey has raised concerns that tankers making deliveries to an existing liquefied gas terminal near Boston could be attacked. He also wants federal regulators to require any new liquefied gas facilities to be built in remote locations.

The Energy Department did not comment directly on the various attack scenarios studied by Sandia, but said the lab's report "indicates that we can continue to transport LNG safely, as long as we continue to implement appropriate safety and security measures".

In addition to Boston, there are three other US liquefied natural gas terminals: Cove Point, Maryland; Elba Island, Georgia; and Lake Charles, Louisiana.

LNG is natural gas, cooled to minus 162C, changed into a liquid and only one six-hundredth of its original volume.

The LNG is transported in special tankers, painted bright orange.

Once it arrives at a terminal, the liquefied gas is returned to a gaseous state and fed into pipelines.

The Sandia study said an intentional attack on a loaded gas tanker could open a hole up to 12m with a 5m hole most likely. This is much larger than previous studies that assumed a hole no larger than about 1m would be blown into the side of a tanker.

A 5m hole could ignite flammable foam insulation, breaching the walls of containers that store liquefied gas inside a tanker, it said.

The analysis largely dismissed some methods used in previous studies to minimise the size of a potential fire, Markey said.

Under the worst case scenario, the blast from a gas tanker would ignite buildings and other structures within 800m. Any workers or residents within that distance would suffer blistering burns, it said.

LNG accounts for about 2 per cent of US gas supplies but that could reach 10 per cent by 2010.

- REUTERS