Author:
Patrick McGee (From an article by Tony Lystra)
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Date Posted: 07/26/06 9:55pm
Expert calls LNG terminal applications 'deficient'
By Tony Lystra
Jul 25, 2006 - 11:23:52 pm PDT
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A former petroleum industry executive said Tuesday that documents submitted by a Houston company hoping to build a liquified natural gas terminal on the Columbia River are "deficient in technical information" and do not adequately address questions about safety, river traffic or even the company's business plan.
"Frankly, if I could get away with it in foreign countries, I'd do exactly what they've done," said James Reed, who has worked for Marathon Oil Co. and Texaco and inspected natural gas facilities across Asia. "This proposal would not pass muster within a major oil company."
Northern Star Natural Gas wants to put an LNG terminal in Bradwood, Ore., where it would unload liquified natural gas from tankers on the Columbia, then pump it through a pipeline that would cross the Mill Creek area of Cowlitz County and connect with an existing line near Ostrander.
Reed spoke Tuesday night at a Cathlamet meeting sponsored by Wahkiakum Friends of the River, which opposes the project. Roughly 60 attended the meeting, including Cowlitz County Commissioner Jeff Rasmussen, state legislators Brian Blake and Dean Takko and a representative from U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell's office.
Reed, who has negotiated petroleum deals with foreign governments and overseen natural gas operations in Tunisia, also said Northern Star's applications do not describe how the company will keep the terminal from corroding or how its computer-controlled safety system would shut the plant down in case of an emergency.
"The studies you do that determine what's going to go wrong and what you're going to do about it --- you need to have that," he told the crowd. "There's nothing in the submissions that suggest how they're going to go about it."
Based on documents filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which will consider the project, "this proposal looks to me something like what we might have done in-house to determine whether we wanted to go forward on a project."
Reed acknowledged that he has not read all of the documents and said he was more familiar with foreign regulations than domestic energy policies.
Still, he said of the documents, "It's so vague. Things that I would have expected to be tied down don't seem to be tied down in the submissions I've read."
Asked how many of the documents he's pored through, Reed held his hands about 3 inches apart.
"I've read a lot," he said.
Reed said that he has not "seen the silver bullet that kills the project." But he speculated that if Northern Star continues to submit what he considers substandard technical documents, federal regulators might become "fed up" and declare the project "a waste of FERC's time."
Reed, now retired, moved to Cathlamet in January. He said he would prefer the company didn't build the plant. But, with a shrug, he added, "I can live with it."
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