Former LILCO engineering veep Matthew Cordaro didn't like it when I challenged him to prove that the Northeast needs not only the Broadwater Liquid Natural Gas project proposed for Long Island Sound but also 2 others that could be put in the Atlantic Ocean south of Long Island.
These days, Cordaro inhabits the world of academia as the head of Long Island University's Center for Management Analysis, and Newsday and other news media quote him as an objective expert on Broadwater.
When I told him that his projections for strong demand growth are contradicted by relatively low estimates made by federal agencies, NY State and Keyspan, he complained that I was debating him. But he finally explained his demand prediction of strong demand this way: "It's just knowing. My information goes beyond what's being projected." The Northport and Port Jeff electric plants would need lots more gas to switch from oil, he said, a desirable change because it is less polluting. I said a spokesperson for Keyspan had just told me they were already using gas at these plants because it's currently cheaper than oil, so where's the need for dramatically more supply? (They are capable of using either fuel, and make the decision based on price.)
He then talked about the fact that 2/3 of the homes on LI (and much of the Northeast) are heated by oil, and that when we all switch, we'll need lots more natural gas. I reminded him that this would require homeowners to invest in expensive new heating equipment, not something most folks will do unless it's cost-justified. Well, he said, he is talking about a long-term change. Indeed.
I asked him what he thought about U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop's idea that a national commission should decide which of the 40 new LNG terminals proposed nationwide should be built, rather than letting the "market" decide. Not necessary, he said, because private companies "wouldn't build these facilities if they weren't sure they needed them," and, anyway, "if they want to overbuild it's to the advantage of the consumer." But what of the downside, to the enviornment of the Sound, to the fishing industry, etc.?
"The downside is minimal," he contended.
I asked him if he is a paid consultant for Broadwater, and he insisted that he receives no money from them.
"My whole motivation is to prevent another Shoreham, and for Long Island not to shoot itself in the foot again. Everyone had the same kind of objections based on emotion and hysteria that caused Shoreham to be shut down."
Obviously, Cordaro is unrepentent about the Shoreham fiasco that has cost, and still is costing Long Islander's billions of dollars. It seems we simple folks just worry too darn much about fish and the people who catch them for us, and about our right to have a say over public property and what is done there. We should just leave our energy decisions to experts like him.
Showing posts with label LNG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LNG. Show all posts
Friday, April 4, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
LNG Floating Terminal A Bad Idea
One of the things that's so galling about Broadwater is the pretense that there's no better way of delivering Liquid Natural Gas to our part of the world (leaving aside for the moment whether we really need more imported supplies.)
But there is a better way, and we need go no further than Massachusetts Bay, 18 miles east of Boston, to see it.
Texas-based Excelerate Energy has just finished the Northeast Gateway LNG terminal there with a capacity of 800 million cubic feet of gas per day. But instead of building a huge floating regasification terminal to take in the gas, as Broadwater wants to do, it installed only a floating buoy system. The special ships that deliver the gas do the whole job, hooking up to the buoy and then heating the LNG to gaseous form so it can be transported through a pipeline. Even more impressive, these environmentally-superior ships use a water re-cycling system that avoids spilling heated water into the ocean, reducing the impact on marine life.
Compare this to what Broadwater would do. Last September, I attended an informational meeting where a Broadwater representativer said that the water discharged by their operations in Long Island Sound would be raised 3 degrees and contain chlorine. This representative characterized the impact as "minimal and temporary."
Well, not quite, says the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. It estimates that the operation of the ships at the floating terminal will kill 270 million eggs, larvae and juvenile fish, each and every year.
But hey, we didn't really expect to keep fishing in Long Island Sound, did we?
But there is a better way, and we need go no further than Massachusetts Bay, 18 miles east of Boston, to see it.
Texas-based Excelerate Energy has just finished the Northeast Gateway LNG terminal there with a capacity of 800 million cubic feet of gas per day. But instead of building a huge floating regasification terminal to take in the gas, as Broadwater wants to do, it installed only a floating buoy system. The special ships that deliver the gas do the whole job, hooking up to the buoy and then heating the LNG to gaseous form so it can be transported through a pipeline. Even more impressive, these environmentally-superior ships use a water re-cycling system that avoids spilling heated water into the ocean, reducing the impact on marine life.
Compare this to what Broadwater would do. Last September, I attended an informational meeting where a Broadwater representativer said that the water discharged by their operations in Long Island Sound would be raised 3 degrees and contain chlorine. This representative characterized the impact as "minimal and temporary."
Well, not quite, says the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. It estimates that the operation of the ships at the floating terminal will kill 270 million eggs, larvae and juvenile fish, each and every year.
But hey, we didn't really expect to keep fishing in Long Island Sound, did we?
Friday, March 21, 2008
Exposed: Little Demand, Little Supply for Broadwater LNG
The lead came to me from a sailor. I was looking for information about what it would be like to have a massive Liquid Natural Gas terminal in Long Island Sound, so I called Tom Cox up in Gloucester, Massachusetts, to ask what happened to boaters when 1,000-foot LNG tankers pass through Boston Harbor.
Cox is a frost-biter, one of those addicted sailors who risk their skin every winter by racing around the harbor in small boats. He told me that the tankers regularly disrupt the races. He and the other sailors have to steer away from the safety zone imposed by patrol boats trying to protect the tankers against a terrorist attack. More about that later.
But Cox really got my attention when he told me that he trades in stocks and commodities, including natural gas. “The really irksome thing to me,” he said, “is that natural gas is very abundant in the U.S.”
What’s that? You mean we don’t really need the natural gas that backers of the Broadwater LNG terminal in the Sound say we do? The backers have claimed—and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has just agreed-- that our region needs the terminal to meet our growing needs.
But if there’s plenty of gas in the U.S., why do we need to:
These predictions come from the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA), whose job is to develop this sort of information to help guide lawmakers and regulators. On March 4, the administrator of the EIA, Guy Caruso, testified (click on the link to a pdf of his testimony) before a U.S. Senate Committee that natural gas consumption is expected to rise 10 percent from 2006 levels by 2016, and then to decline. By 2030, the agency predicts, consumption will be up less than 5 percent over 2006 levels.
What about specifically in New York? The state’s energy plan does predict growth in demand of about 1.5 percent a year, particularly if electric utilities switch to gas from oil to cut pollution and greenhouse gases. But it also says this growth can be met by increased capacity of the pipelines which supply our area. In fact, much of the pipeline expansion predicted in the 2002 plan (which has not been completely updated) has already occurred or is in process.
As for supply, Caruso gave an assessment for the six new LNG terminals in the U.S. already under construction (four along the Gulf Coast and two near Gloucester, Massachusetts). Without even considering the additional supply needed for Broadwater should it be built, Caruso said that “given global LNG supply constraints” LNG import facilities in the U.S. will function at “below 50 percent” capacity through 2030.
To my knowledge, Broadwater officials have never addressed this stunning conclusion, choosing instead to bash opponents for—how predictable—unnecessarily exploiting and inflaming public fears.
Obviously, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which yesterday gave approval for Broadwater, is not on the same page as the EIA. Other entities, however, have considered these basic questions of supply and demand in opposing Broadwater. Among these is the LNG Task Force created by Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell. This bipartisan group has charged that FERC “irresponsibly” concluded that Broadwater is the only option for supplying additional natural gas to New York and Connecticut. As Tom Cox had inferred, and the task force made explicit in a letter to New York’s new governor, David Paterson on March 13:
You’d think this information, plus the EIA’s predictions of slow demand growth, would have given FERC good reason to be very dubious about Broadwater’s effort to take over public waters of Long Island Sound. But when looking at alternatives, the agency made sure its finding would favor the project by considering only other options that could also deliver a billion cubic feet of new gas to the region. Thus, the readiness of the Iroquois Pipeline company to add 400 million cubic feet of supply wasn’t taken into account. (The Iroquois Pipeline terminates on Long Island and supplies Keyspan and Con Edison.)
Why not? Because, once again the Bush Administration and its minions in the federal agencies are allowing the big energy companies to set U.S. energy policy. Even though the market for oil and gas is dominated by a handful of enormous companies, the Bushies act as if true competition were at work, and that the imaginary free market can magically make better policy than we actual humans.
As for the perils of LNG terminals, Richard Clarke, the former anti-terrorism adviser to Bush, has said that the mammoth tankers might as well have targets painted on their sides as they traverse narrow inlets like Boston Harbor and the mouth of Long Island Sound. An October, 2005 article in a local Massachusetts newspaper, SouthCoast Today, reported that “Boston officials cross their fingers when the 1,000 foot tankers pass through the harbors, fearing an accident or a terrorist attack on a loaded vessel could produce a conflagration that incinerates businesses and residents alike up to one mile away.”
Broadwater backers point out correctly that LNG does not explode and that even if it should spill and burn, the Broadwater terminal would be about 10 miles off both the Connecticut and Long Island shores. Of course, any boaters or fishers who might be nearby at the time would be toast. But the tankers will be less than a mile from Fishers Island when they enter the Sound through the Race, which takes its name from the turbulent rush of water that spills in and out of the Sound with every tide.
If a tanker were simply to lose steerage—as happened not long ago in Boston Harbor—or run aground in the Race—it would block all sizable commercial vessels from entering the Sound. (The only other way in, at Plum Gut, is too narrow for such large vessels.)
The next step forward for Broadwater would be approval by New York Governor Paterson, but no matter what he decides, litigation will tie up this project for a long time to come.
I can only hope that he will understand that what is at stake here. Otherwise, the Bush Administration, this time in the guise of FERC, will again have thumbed its nose at the public while ignoring the best supply and demand predictions of its own sister agency. Broadwater Energy is a partnership of TransCanada, a pipeline company, and Shell Oil. Their fingerprints are all over FERC’s biased decision to grant the project a permit. ##
Cox is a frost-biter, one of those addicted sailors who risk their skin every winter by racing around the harbor in small boats. He told me that the tankers regularly disrupt the races. He and the other sailors have to steer away from the safety zone imposed by patrol boats trying to protect the tankers against a terrorist attack. More about that later.
But Cox really got my attention when he told me that he trades in stocks and commodities, including natural gas. “The really irksome thing to me,” he said, “is that natural gas is very abundant in the U.S.”
What’s that? You mean we don’t really need the natural gas that backers of the Broadwater LNG terminal in the Sound say we do? The backers have claimed—and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has just agreed-- that our region needs the terminal to meet our growing needs.
But if there’s plenty of gas in the U.S., why do we need to:
- become newly dependent on foreign supplies?
- give up public property, a piece of precious Long Island Sound?
- allow 1,000-foot ships to risk disaster entering the Sound the through its perilous mouth, the narrow, rocky channel known as The Race? (These tankers, by the way, run on one of the most polluting forms of petroleum and will be traveling thousands of miles across the oceans.)
These predictions come from the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA), whose job is to develop this sort of information to help guide lawmakers and regulators. On March 4, the administrator of the EIA, Guy Caruso, testified (click on the link to a pdf of his testimony) before a U.S. Senate Committee that natural gas consumption is expected to rise 10 percent from 2006 levels by 2016, and then to decline. By 2030, the agency predicts, consumption will be up less than 5 percent over 2006 levels.
What about specifically in New York? The state’s energy plan does predict growth in demand of about 1.5 percent a year, particularly if electric utilities switch to gas from oil to cut pollution and greenhouse gases. But it also says this growth can be met by increased capacity of the pipelines which supply our area. In fact, much of the pipeline expansion predicted in the 2002 plan (which has not been completely updated) has already occurred or is in process.
As for supply, Caruso gave an assessment for the six new LNG terminals in the U.S. already under construction (four along the Gulf Coast and two near Gloucester, Massachusetts). Without even considering the additional supply needed for Broadwater should it be built, Caruso said that “given global LNG supply constraints” LNG import facilities in the U.S. will function at “below 50 percent” capacity through 2030.
To my knowledge, Broadwater officials have never addressed this stunning conclusion, choosing instead to bash opponents for—how predictable—unnecessarily exploiting and inflaming public fears.
Obviously, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which yesterday gave approval for Broadwater, is not on the same page as the EIA. Other entities, however, have considered these basic questions of supply and demand in opposing Broadwater. Among these is the LNG Task Force created by Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell. This bipartisan group has charged that FERC “irresponsibly” concluded that Broadwater is the only option for supplying additional natural gas to New York and Connecticut. As Tom Cox had inferred, and the task force made explicit in a letter to New York’s new governor, David Paterson on March 13:
There are viable alternatives to provide New York with the natural gas it needs and these alternatives will be up and running well before Broadwater is scheduled to be on line…FERC disregarded any actual or any potential increase in the natural gas supply resulting from upgrades to the existing pipeline system and/or from the other new LNG facilities.
You’d think this information, plus the EIA’s predictions of slow demand growth, would have given FERC good reason to be very dubious about Broadwater’s effort to take over public waters of Long Island Sound. But when looking at alternatives, the agency made sure its finding would favor the project by considering only other options that could also deliver a billion cubic feet of new gas to the region. Thus, the readiness of the Iroquois Pipeline company to add 400 million cubic feet of supply wasn’t taken into account. (The Iroquois Pipeline terminates on Long Island and supplies Keyspan and Con Edison.)
Why not? Because, once again the Bush Administration and its minions in the federal agencies are allowing the big energy companies to set U.S. energy policy. Even though the market for oil and gas is dominated by a handful of enormous companies, the Bushies act as if true competition were at work, and that the imaginary free market can magically make better policy than we actual humans.
As for the perils of LNG terminals, Richard Clarke, the former anti-terrorism adviser to Bush, has said that the mammoth tankers might as well have targets painted on their sides as they traverse narrow inlets like Boston Harbor and the mouth of Long Island Sound. An October, 2005 article in a local Massachusetts newspaper, SouthCoast Today, reported that “Boston officials cross their fingers when the 1,000 foot tankers pass through the harbors, fearing an accident or a terrorist attack on a loaded vessel could produce a conflagration that incinerates businesses and residents alike up to one mile away.”
Broadwater backers point out correctly that LNG does not explode and that even if it should spill and burn, the Broadwater terminal would be about 10 miles off both the Connecticut and Long Island shores. Of course, any boaters or fishers who might be nearby at the time would be toast. But the tankers will be less than a mile from Fishers Island when they enter the Sound through the Race, which takes its name from the turbulent rush of water that spills in and out of the Sound with every tide.
If a tanker were simply to lose steerage—as happened not long ago in Boston Harbor—or run aground in the Race—it would block all sizable commercial vessels from entering the Sound. (The only other way in, at Plum Gut, is too narrow for such large vessels.)
The next step forward for Broadwater would be approval by New York Governor Paterson, but no matter what he decides, litigation will tie up this project for a long time to come.
I can only hope that he will understand that what is at stake here. Otherwise, the Bush Administration, this time in the guise of FERC, will again have thumbed its nose at the public while ignoring the best supply and demand predictions of its own sister agency. Broadwater Energy is a partnership of TransCanada, a pipeline company, and Shell Oil. Their fingerprints are all over FERC’s biased decision to grant the project a permit. ##
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