Green Futures Pressures FERC
DANIEL FOWLER , Herald News Staff
Reporter 06/09/2004
In an attempt to force
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to revise a recent study
on spills from liquefied natural gas tankers, Green Futures,
a local environmental group, has called on Massachusetts, federal
legislators to join the fray.
Green Futures is requesting that the legislators ensure that
FERC updates its recently released study, done by ABS Consultants,
on LNG spills and that the FERC draft new regulations based on
this revised report. The group also wants the public to have
30 days to comment on the revised report and 60 days to review
and comment on the draft regulations.
"Because FERC doesn't have any regulations related to (LNG)
marine spills, they asked ABS consulting firm, which does a lot
of marine safety studies, to study the literature and scientific
evidence to determine what would be a (realistic) scenario for
a marine spill," said Al Lima, director of research for
Green Futures. "What ABS did was to review various mathematical
models which are based on if a certain opening occurs (in a tanker
and) how much liquid will come out and what will happen if it
is ignited."
According to Lima, however, Green Futures is concerned that LNG
industry officials are putting pressure on the FERC to take a
blasé approach to the report, which the environmental
group says already underestimates the danger associated with
an LNG spill.
"Our concern is that FERC will ignore the findings of the
ABS study or interpret them in a manner that neutralizes their
findings," Green Futures President Timothy Bennett said.
"When FERC chairman Patrick Wood says in announcing the
ABS report that LNG spills and fires are low-probability events,
and when FERC spokesmen say that the study will not unduly delay,
the permitting of pending applications, they seem to be sending
a signal to the LNG industry that it is permissible to dismiss
the study."
Lima said the ABS study was based on single-hulled tankers, which has provided the FERC and industry officials with a built-in argument to negate the study; LNG tankers are now double-hulled. "The ABS study provides an opening to critics when it implies that double-hulled tankers provide increased protection," Green Futures said in a statement. "However, the study made no mention of the double-hulled French oil tanker Limburg that was attacked by a skiff with explosives on Oct. 6, 2002, resulting in a hole in the ship that was far larger than that used in the ABS model," which used single-hulled tankers.
Lima said Green Futures also
wants the FERC to include mention of the January 2004 LNG explosion
in Algeria in the revised study. The FERC should "take that
Algerian incident into account when developing regulations for
tankers," Lima said. "That (incident) basically supports
(former Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor James
Fay's) assertions that the thermal regulation zone should be
at least 1.1 miles in radius from a tanker spill."
Lima said this means that tankers should not be allowed to travel
within 1.1 miles of a populated area "which would basically
exclude (tankers) from going through Fall River because ... the
channel is only 600 feet from the shoreline for most of the five-mile
route."
Green Futures also believes that the two-week public comment period on the original ABS report that the FERC released on May 13 was far too short. Green Futures submitted comments to the FERC on the ABS study during that period.
FERC spokeswoman Tamara Young-Allen
did not return a phone call seeking comment.