LNG article in today's Globe -- Nov. 23

[Diesel298]

these tree hugger threads are great entertainment

 

[jchaplain]

Well, I'll admit that you have a good point about the storage tanks, but the whole initial sell was to eliminate the dangers of the Everett facility and put the storage and incoming ships elsewhere. And I don't think taking public parkland is the way to go.

They want to take Outer Brewster because it would be cheap and easy. I think ( rather I know) they would take Sequoia National park or any other parkland thay can get their hands on if they could. Thats why these parklands are set aside.

As far as the storage goes, if pressed they could create their own man-made island and platform. Do you know how much of Boston downtown was once water?
Spots a little further out like three and one half fathom ledges could be filled and developed for an offloading/storage facility. But they try to take the cheap easy way out and claim the parkland first....of course.

I guess we can agree to disagree. You would hand over our parklands to the oil companies like it was nothing. I would not.

I heard that this is now a moot point anyway as they gave up on the proposal! Good!

 

[Dragon2115]

Well, I'll admit that you have a good point about the storage tanks, but the whole initial sell was to eliminate the dangers of the Everett facility and put the storage and incoming ships elsewhere. And I don't think taking public parkland is the way to go.

That's a very real issue and the reason I oppose the Fall River proposal. It's too close to too large of a population. I feel the same way about the Everett facility as well. Tom Mennino is never going to stop pushing to have the Everett terminal closed on homeland security grounds. However, once another facility is up and running in the area the inner harbor traffic would be reduced. Once that were to happen Mennino would use it as the opening to push for shutting Everett down.

As far as public park lands are concerned, take a look around the state and see just how much is taken up by State and National Parks. Yes, there is a reason to preserve certain places for historic and recreational purposes. But there has to be a line somewhere, we can't just put everywhere that isn't already developed off limits. Some people actually want to do this and damn the consequences.

They want to take Outer Brewster because it would be cheap and easy. I think ( rather I know) they would take Sequoia National park or any other parkland thay can get their hands on if they could. Thats why these parklands are set aside.

We've turned so much into park land that there isn't much left.

They want Outer Brewster because it is strategically located and has at least the minimum amount of land needed for the facility. As a company why would you invest several billion dollars into building a platform big enough to do off-loading and storage along with the necessary underwater pipeline when you can build a land based operation for several hundred million?

Lets not forget something else, Boston is an industrial seaport not an amusement park. We shouldn't be dumping into the harbor but we do need to keep in mind that it is a seaport.

As far as the storage goes, if pressed they could create their own man-made island and platform. Do you know how much of Boston downtown was once water?
Spots a little further out like three and one half fathom ledges could be filled and developed for an offloading/storage facility. But they try to take the cheap easy way out and claim the parkland first....of course.

Yes, I do know how much of Boston started out as water. Do you have any idea of how much building a man-made island will cost? if you were running a company would you approve of making an investment that will take 50 years to get a return on and might bankrupt the company? And on the environmental side, you think the tree huggers are up in arms over developing Outer Brewster then just wait and see what happens when someone proposes filling 3 1/2 fathom ledge to make a man-made island. You'll have every environmentalist from Maine to Maryland flipping out over it.

I guess we can agree to disagree. You would hand over our parklands to the oil companies like it was nothing. I would not.

Yes we will and no I would not. Unlike you however, I'm willing to look at the proposals and weigh ALL of the costs and benefits, not just the ones that are important to me.

I heard that this is now a moot point anyway as they gave up on the proposal! Good!

That's true, and we're going to get what we deserve eventually when time off from work is meaningless because we can't afford to do anything with it. What most people forget is that things are connected in ways that are not completely obvious. Take for example the power plant that uses NG to fire its boilers. When the price of NG goes up due to short supply they charge more for the electricity they produce. The company that uses that electricity has to pay more for it so they pass the increase on to the consumer that buys their product. Government buildings, schools, etc. need power too, and as the cost increases they either have to raise property taxes or cut services. And so the wheel turns, all landing on the end consumer who btw is also paying more for the electricity from the power station too. Hope they don't heat with NG too or they're really going to be feeling it. In the end the government will step in with an overriding public need and we'll get a a new LNG facility anyway. And once the government gets involved we can be pretty sure it'll end up somewhere we really don't want it and cost five times more than what was proposed in the first place only now it'll be tax-payer subsidized. So in the end we're eventually going to be stuck with it anyway AND we'll be paying through the nose for it. Sounds like a win-win situation to me, unfortunately not for us.

 

[steveann]

It's interesting that they seem to want to put in terminals "offshore" for loading /unloading. Mattering on what their definition of "offshore" is, they could be asking for a disaster, as anyone who's been in the North Atlantic in the winter can tell you. One good Nor'easter, and you can just go and rebuild your multimillion dollar LNG site. Of course, I may be misunderstanding the desired locations for these sites. Maybe they're more protected than they seem to be.