Weaver’s Cove rebuts earthquake risk claims

Posted on 10 May 2011 Tags: earthquake risk &bull safety

In a letter to the editor published in the Fall River Herald News, Weaver’s Cove Energy rebuts the inaccurate and misleading  earthquake risk claims made by Patrick Barosh.  Due to an editing error, Weaver’s Cove’s full response was not published in the newspaper.  The full response is provided below.

http://www.heraldnews.com/opinions/x767226740/LETTER-LNG-already-earthquake-safe

LETTER: LNG already earthquake-safe

Patrick Barosh in his April 27th Guest Opinion, “Local earthquake risk another reason LNG is a bad idea,” ignores the facts.

While we agree that New England is regularly subject to small-magnitude quakes and, occasionally, to larger ones, Weaver’s Cove Energy has been comprehensively addressing design and construction standards for earthquakes with the appropriate federal regulatory authorities for nearly a decade.

Mr. Barosh’s recent opinion piece makes the same claims and uses the same inflammatory rhetoric as a similar opinion piece he wrote that was published on April 14, 2010 in a prominent Rhode Island newspaper. What Mr. Barosh continually fails to mention is that federal siting standards require an extensive and well documented analysis of earthquake risks for LNG facilities (just as they do for other facilities, such as nuclear power plants, bridges, and other critical pieces of infrastructure). Weaver’s Cove Energy has complied with and met or exceeded each of these federal standards. Mr. Barosh should be well aware of these facts as they are well documented in the public permitting record with which he claims to be so familiar. These issues were also addressed in that same prominent Rhode Island newspaper on April 29, 2010 in Weaver’s Cove Energy’s response to Mr. Barosh’s earlier opinion piece.

Despite Mr. Barosh’s claims to the contrary, the truth is that earthquake forces and their potential impacts on LNG facilities have been well studied and are well understood. LNG facilities are designed to withstand these forces and these designs have been severely tested around the world. The 50-plus LNG tanks standing in New England and the hundreds of miles of interstate natural-gas pipelines (including buried submarine pipelines in rivers and bays) crisscrossing this region have been designed with earthquake forces in mind. None has ever been damaged by an earthquake.

Regionally, the existing LNG tank on Bay Street in Fall River has operated safely and reliably while exposed to numerous earthquakes over its 30-plus year existence, as have the large interstate natural-gas pipelines feeding gas to the City of Fall River and the Brayton Point power plant, in Somerset.

Look around the world: LNG facilities are in environments that are far more earthquake-prone than New England, including Japan, with dozens of import terminals — including a location with a subsea cryogenic LNG pipeline. The March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan was one of the most powerful earthquakes and worst natural disasters in recorded history, killing more than 15,000 people, and causing major damage to Japan’s infrastructure — destroying nuclear power plants, highways, rail lines, homes, bridges and buildings. Yet, every LNG import terminal in the county survived safely, and as the Providence Journal reported on April 26, 2011 “Officials there have dramatically increased LNG shipments to help rescue their citizens from cold and hunger, while keeping the economy alive, in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami that badly damaged the country’s nuclear-power capability.”

We agree with Mr. Barosh’s comment that the project should not go forward without extensive investigations. Had Mr. Barosh bothered to do his research (surprisingly, he appears not to have done so, even as he continues to claim that he is a professional researcher), he would have realized such studies are mandated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and have been carried out in depth by Weaver’s Cove Energy. To quote from page 3 of FERC’s publication “A Guide to LNG — What All Citizens Should Know”:

“LNG facilities must meet stringent standards to ensure public safety and plant reliability in the event of an earthquake. Extensive studies of the geological conditions and earthquake history of a proposed LNG site are required to determine appropriate design loads on the critical components of the LNG plant. These critical components must be designed and constructed to maintain LNG containment during and after an earthquake.”

We encourage Mr. Barosh to study the filings that Weaver’s Cove Energy made in compliance with FERC guidelines, which show that the LNG facility will not be affected by earthquakes. One of the more recent submittals was “Resource Report 6,” and like all our other fillings, it is available on the FERC web site (Docket CP04-36).

Mr. Barosh’s claim that Weaver’s Cove Energy will not release important information is disingenuous at best. Mr. Barosh did petition FERC for additional information by filing a request under the Freedom of Information Act on February 17, 2010. However, we respectfully remind Mr. Barosh that on March 15, 2010, less than one month later, he withdrew his Freedom of Information Act request. The reason for Mr. Barosh’s withdrawal of his request is memorialized in a March 15, 2010 email from FERC to Mr. Barosh that confirms that Mr. Barosh received the information he requested “directly from representatives of Weaver’s Cove”.

Weaver’s Cove stands ready to respond to any questions or concerns that Mr. Barosh or any citizen may have. His reckless letter, however, is based on his unsubstantiated allegations and inaccurate characterization of both the LNG siting process and our project.

Gregg Landes
Vice President-Business Development
Weaver’s Cove Energy
Fall River