Coast Guard Can’t Defend Woodside LNG Ships in Santa Monica Bay

Photo credit, GAO
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

• Blue Whales Down Under May Be Adversely Affected by Company’s Air Gun Explosions

BY HANS LAETZ

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.