Coast Guard Can’t Defend Woodside LNG
Ships in Santa Monica Bay
• Blue Whales Down Under May Be
Adversely Affected by Company’s Air Gun Explosions
The Australian company that wants to
build a liquefied natural gas terminal nearly 22 miles off
Malibu is coming under heavy criticism from environmentalists
for using underwater explosions to explore for oil and gas
in Australia’s best-known summer whale habitat.
Woodside Petroleum is also under fire for a
natural gas processing problem near Perth that disrupted LNG
production, and created an electrical crisis in Western
Australia, two weeks ago. LNG opponents have seized on that as
proof that the reliability of LNG production and transport
technology is not certain.
And in Washington, a congressional study
released last week painted a dismal picture of the
nation’s ability to protect petroleum vessels such
as floating LNG terminals from domestic and foreign terrorism.
The U.S. Coast Guard agreed that it does not have the resources
to adequately protect existing facilities, much less the dozens
of LNG terminals now on the drawing boards for U.S. coastlines.
The General Accountability Office
report cited a half-dozen terrorist attacks on oil carriers,
and noted that just three percent of the energy imported into
the U.S. via ship is in the form of LNG. But LNG carriers
contain a fuel that is more combustible than oil, making
them a more attractive target if they grow in number,
opponents say.
California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, as he
cast the deciding vote against the BHP Billiton LNG
platform proposed last year, cited the threat of an LNG
ship being commandeered, “sailed into Santa
Monica and blown up.”
The GAO report notes that LNG is
“highly combustible and pose(s) a risk to public
safety of fire or—in a more unlikely scenario in which
they are in a confined space—explosion.”
LNG ships are viewed by maritime experts as
attractive targets, because the energy they carry is
exponentially greater than an oil tanker. Although LNG
technically cannot explode or even burn, the moment it is
released from a closed container it starts to expand
explosively, choking off oxygen in a colorless cloud until it
reaches a state where it can burn or explode just like the
natural gas found in buildings and pipelines everywhere.
The little noticed GAO report issued
last year said the state of the art of knowledge on how massive
LNG spills would behave is based on large-scale
extrapolations from small-scale tests done with
limited technology 40 years ago. That study concluded that
scientists cannot possibly make any conclusion as to LNG
safety given the lack of research into how massive cargo ships
would react when multiple failures occur, or when the -260
degree cargo spills and suddenly regasifies, expanding
600 times as it comes into contact with air and
water.
The GAO study said there is no credible
threat for attacks in U.S. waters right now, but Rep. Edward
Markey, D-Mass., said the World Trade Center attacks show that
there doesn’t have to be a recognized credible
threat for an attack to occur. Markey’s district hosts an
LNG terminal, and the study was done at his request.
Opponents have noted that Al Qaeda
successfully attacked a French tanker; the Limburg, in an area
heavily patrolled by U.S. Navy forces, and also was able to
nearly sink the U.S.S. Cole in harbor. Markey and others
have worried publicly that a floating LNG terminal in U.S.
waters, or ships unloading their cargoes, could meet
a similar fate.
The Coast Guard is undermanned and
underequipped for its existing duties, and has said that
the addition of just one LNG terminal in New York’s Long
Island Sound would require another Coast Guard ship and
nearly 100 more crewmembers.
“If it takes more resources,
we’ll take responsibility [for paying for
it],” said Woodside President Steve Larson in a telephone
interview Friday. “This is an area of the Coast Guard
and if there’s a problem with their resources,
[Woodside] should fix it.”
Larson said the use of American citizens on
its proposed twin LNG depot ships, and heavy security on board,
will address security threats.
“I think this demonstrates how
they are completely overselling the safety of their
project,” said Rory Cox, an anti-LNG activist at Pacific
Environment in San Francisco. They say, ‘No
need to worry, the Coast Guard is watching our back.’
Well, the Coast Guard is not prepared to do that.”
The whale flap stems from oil and gas
exploration just being started by Woodside off the west
coast of Victoria, Australia. The company is using
hundreds of explosive undersea air blasts, similar to
bombs, to map the subsurface strata of a potential oil and
gas field.
Woodside’s
environmental report in Australia
acknowledges, “There may be some temporary
displacement of (whales) as a result of the seismic survey
and localized impacts on feeding behavior.”
Peter Gill, a whale expert quoted by the
Sydney Morning Herald, said “there is no doubt that
the sounds produced by seismic air guns are right in the
frequencies used by blue whales for
communication.” Experts said the
exploration is likely to drive away dozens of endangered
blue whales that congregate there every Southern
Hemisphere summer, when ocean currents concentrate krill
and attract the leviathans.
Woodside’s American official told The
News Friday, “I don’t really see any relationship
with us. Not any type of similar equipment would be used
here,” Larson said.
California whales, he said, would not be
affected by the Woodside LNG terminal planned for Santa
Monica Bay, called “Ocean- Way,” because it would
be 22 miles off the nearest coast, Point Dume, and whales like
to stay by the shoreline.
That theory is hotly disputed by some
whale experts, who said frequent whale sightings in the
San Pedro Channel and Channel Islands show that the
Woodside site, which likely will also generate loud noise,
is exactly on a migratory whale path.
Compounding Woodside’s bad
public relations month was a small fire at its mammoth Karratha
gas processing facility in Western Australia, where LNG
cargo schedules were disrupted for several days and natural gas
deliveries to the Perth region were cut off early this month.
Electrical generation was diminished all
across the state owing to fuel shortages, and customers were
asked to throttle back air conditioning on a 107-degree
afternoon. The Western Australia government has
opened what it calls a “please explain” inquiry to
Woodside as to what happened.
The Woodside “Ocean Way”
project is one of three active LNG proposals for the Southern
California coast. It is currently undergoing environmental
review by the U.S. Maritime Administration, the Coast
Guard, and the City of Los Angeles where the
pipelines would come ashore. A decision on it, as well as
an unrelated LNG terminal proposed for an offshore oil rig near
Ventura, could come next year.
Malibu residents galvanized last year
to help successfully defeat BHP Billiton’s proposed
“Cabrillo Port” LNG terminal 13.8 miles off
Malibu’s westernmost point.
TERRORIST TARGET—The MV Limburg, a
French-owned oil tanker, was attacked by Al Qaeda
speedboats in the Arabian Sea in 2002. A new federal study says
the Coast Guard does not have enough ships or personnel to
protect LNG vessels proposed for U.S. waters. An application
for a terminal near Malibu was rejected last year over fears
that an LNG ship “could be run aground in Santa
Monica,” but two others are still proposed for the area.
