LNG industry: Today’s operations are safe

As tragic as the Cleveland disaster was, it did imbue the LNG industry with a culture of safety.

If you’ll give them time, people from the industry will talk endlessly about safety within the entire LNG value chain, from liquefaction to storage, tankers and regasification. These operations are heavily regulated for safety across the world, and industry members will even boast about that regulation and insist that potential hazards are manageable.

To illustrate the concept of safety, visitors to ConocoPhillips’ plant in Nikiski see a series of demonstrations aimed to demystify LNG, including:

A plant manager pours LNG on the floor. Instantly, the gas forms into clear beads then — poof — vaporizes as it warms while absorbing heat from the carpet and air.

The manager dunks graham crackers in LNG then invites guests to eat them. They do so warily, misty vapor wafting from their mouths as they chew. This stunt can be an acutely effective in LNG-leery towns when the people consuming the crackers are children of community leaders and opponents.

The LNG industry does have a strong safety record, marred mainly by the Cleveland disaster, a fire and death at a Maryland import plant in 1979 and an explosion that killed 27 people at an Algeria liquefaction plant in 2004.

As an industry website puts it: “LNG is transported many miles as it crosses the ocean, transferred to storage tanks, converted back to natural gas and then sent to market. The LNG industry has spent a considerable amount of time analyzing and assessing the hazards along the way and has either eliminated or developed mitigation techniques to reduce risks. As a result, in more than 50 years of commercial LNG use, no major accidents or safety or security problems have occurred, either in port or at sea.” (The Maryland accident actually was 33 years ago.)

The site stresses that “LNG is not explosive.” But the vapors are flammable — if they comprise 5 to 15 percent of the air and something ignites them. U.S. regulations require safety zones around LNG facilities so that any vapors accidentally released get fully diluted before they reach the property line.

University of Texas researchers concluded that although “LNG operations are industrial activities,” LNG can be safely transported and used if regulators hold the industry to the safety standards and protocols that have developed over time.

—Bill White