Tuesday, May 4, 2010

While are attention is on the Gulf of Mexico don’t forget, Liquid Natural Gas

BP on deep water drilling:
The rate of accidents and incidents "is approaching zero,"
Liquid Natural Gas Industry on the safety of liquid natural gas:
‘The experience of the LNG industry suggests that hazards are manageable.”

A liquid natural gas docking and tank farm is being built near Baltimore, MD at Sparrows Point, MD.


Proposed LNG facility- Philadelphia, PA: 0.6 Bcfd (Freedom Energy Center--PGW) Port Richmond in Philadelphia.

From the Baltimore Sun:
“If ruptured, an LNG storage tank will begin to spew this liquefied natural gas onto the ground or the water around it. No matter how cold it is, the temperature outside the tank will be much warmer than that inside the tank, which is cooled to negative 260 degrees Fahrenheit. The spilled LNG will then begin to "boil" and return to a gaseous state, increasing in volume as it does so by 600 times.


It will also begin to mix with the surrounding air. Once the mixture reaches a ratio of 10 percent to 15 percent natural gas to the surrounding air, it will be flammable. Taking into account the increase in volume from vaporization and caused by this mixing, this means that the contents of a single large LNG storage tank with a capacity of, say, 140,000 cubic meters of gas, will, if ruptured, produce tens of billions of cubic feet of flammable gas. According to studies, the resulting air-gas mixture plume could extend as far as 7.3 miles from the ruptured tank.


If breathed, this mixture would be deadly. If ignited, it would produce a monstrous fireball and could cause third-degree burns and ignite structures as far as 2 miles away. No existing firefighting technology can fight such a blaze.”
More at:
Danger at our doorstep Baltimore Sun

More about gas in Pennsylvania at:
Riverseekerblog


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