Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Saving the Lobsters. There are two Texas energy companies currently vying for permission to build a gas pipeline and liquefied natural gas unloading station that will start approximately 13 miles off the coast of Gloucester and extend down the coast of New England. The project is called the 'Neptune Deepwater Port' (rather sounds like a James Bond movie doesn't it?). Pro forma public hearings will be taking place this month but given today's gas supply jitters, this is more or less all a done deal. The hearings are designed to do two vitally important things for the region: 1) placate fishermen and lobstermen who fear the docking complexes will negatively impact their fishing territory and 2) placate fears that tankers heading through Boston Harbor could potentially generate a mega-fireball headed straight toward waterfront areas if they were to be attacked by terrorists. Easy:... just as Bechtel engineers were able to assuage Boston that the Big Dig would be a piece of engineering cake but now we have leaks all over the place not to mention Boston lies on a fault line due for an earthquake, so too will Duke Energy Corp. and Excelerate Energy LLC be able to convince those who need convincing that they know what they are doing.
More realistic and likely a problem is the following: one of the Texas companies responsible for building the so-called HubLine, a 29-mile stretch of undersea gas line from Beverly Harbor to Weymouth that will eventually link up to the Neptune pipe, should give us cause for reflection: . with no experience building pipelines in the turbulent cold waters of the Atlantic, Duke unfortunately left large swathes of pipeline inadequately buried with the end result that the statistical likelihood of an accident (say a big ship dropping anchor in the wrong place) is probably a lot higher than any human being living on the coast would like. Did they learn from their mistakes? Hopefully. Fix it? Well herein lies the problem... if you fix it you open up a whole new can of worms in that you disrupt the seabed to such an extent as to cause irreparable damage to delicate breeding grounds for fish and shellfish alike. Or, fixing it is just technically infeasible. The Wildlife Fisheries Agency is monitoring this situation but the end assessment is due AFTER construction would begin on the Neptune Project. Yes, yes, yes of course we need gas. We need oil. I for one have no desire to freeze my Californian ass off in a Californian-styled, gas-heated house. I'm just worried this project will be approved ad hoc willy-nilly. Lobsters and more be damned....
More realistic and likely a problem is the following: one of the Texas companies responsible for building the so-called HubLine, a 29-mile stretch of undersea gas line from Beverly Harbor to Weymouth that will eventually link up to the Neptune pipe, should give us cause for reflection: . with no experience building pipelines in the turbulent cold waters of the Atlantic, Duke unfortunately left large swathes of pipeline inadequately buried with the end result that the statistical likelihood of an accident (say a big ship dropping anchor in the wrong place) is probably a lot higher than any human being living on the coast would like. Did they learn from their mistakes? Hopefully. Fix it? Well herein lies the problem... if you fix it you open up a whole new can of worms in that you disrupt the seabed to such an extent as to cause irreparable damage to delicate breeding grounds for fish and shellfish alike. Or, fixing it is just technically infeasible. The Wildlife Fisheries Agency is monitoring this situation but the end assessment is due AFTER construction would begin on the Neptune Project. Yes, yes, yes of course we need gas. We need oil. I for one have no desire to freeze my Californian ass off in a Californian-styled, gas-heated house. I'm just worried this project will be approved ad hoc willy-nilly. Lobsters and more be damned....
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