Federal energy officials have granted Hess LNG another year to work up a new plan for a liquefied natural gas terminal along the Delaware River opposite Claymont, citing unsettled terms for a key safety evaluation.
The company purchased energy giant BP’s project and rights to land in Logan Township, N.J., after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Delaware’s authority to veto construction of a pier in a portion of the waterway where state conservation laws ban new offloading piers.
Hess said it would seek a new site or configuration to avoid conflict with Delaware’s Coastal Zone Act. That effort was stymied by a federal pipeline safety agency’s withdrawal of support for a widely used method for calculating the size of areas at risk from fires triggered by pipeline leaks or spills into impoundment pits.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, in a recent letter, gave the company until June 30, 2012, to file a new project proposal.
FERC officials approved BP’s plan in 2006, a ruling that gave the company a mid-2009 deadline to begin operations. The permit already has been extended twice.
Hess has said it planned a smaller terminal than the original proposal. BP’s plan called for a terminal capable of storing up to 118.9 million gallons of LNG in three large storage tanks, with two to three specially designed tankers delivering gas weekly.
The site was expected to store enough energy to meet the one-day needs of more than 38 million homes after the LNG was warmed and expanded into regular gas, with enough pipeline capacity to send out the daily energy needs for 5 million homes.
Hmmm. that storage capacity of 119 million Gallons of Liquified natural gas works out to about 10 billion cubic feet of gas at room temperature and pressure when evaporated for the pipline. that would fill a cube 2150 feet on a side. almost half a mile on a side. That would make a big BOOM!
Well, from what i have read in the past, they need to dredge the channel deeper for the new super LNG tankers. the tankers they are building for will carry 200,000 cubic meters lof LNG, or about 4.3 Billion cubic feet of gas. by their own safety estimates, the blast zone of a tanker explosion is about 1 mile from center channel. My house is about 3/4 to 7/8 mile from center channel , so i guess my hood would be toast.
I’m sure that this has something to do with Chesapeke Utility/Eastern Shore and it’s push into the Marcellus Shale Fracking initiative. Once they get the NG lines into place, they’re gonna have to hold it somewhere . . .
And Ken, judging by the PSI and duration, I believe that a simple helmet will suffice . . . ::
On point . . . anyone see the Mythbusters episode where they blew up a cement truck? Truck = Kens house . . lol
No, the one mile radius is part of the safety evaluation. just like in Boston harbor, when the LNG tanker comes in twice a week, the coast guard, harbor patrol and HLS shut down the harbor traffic untill it docks. so as nothing bumps into it. That costs a lot of traffic down time on the water and bridges, and money.
But the original intent of the LNG facility on the jersey side, actuall 1000 feet out in the river on a dock to be built, was that we were running low on NG for the east coast. They were planning to import LNG from south america or the middle east by tanker to keep our heat on. But now we have marcelus shale gas developing. they may turn that facility around to make and export LNG to Europe for profit. if we frack the marcelus, we wont need an import off loading/vaporization facility. Marcelus will give us lots of gas for a long time. but since they have the land and lots of studies and permits invested in, they will probably build a liquification export facility instead. and ship our gas over seas.
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