Opposition Grows to Gas Terminal on Elba Island Many Fear the Danger of a Release From the Liquefied Natural Gas Storage Site.
By MARY LANDERS
SAVANNAH — Even as two enormous storage tanks are being built to double the capacity of the El Paso Corp.’s liquefied natural gas terminal on Elba Island, an environmental group continues to call for the facility to move offshore.
The latest concern of Citizens for Clean Air and Water is the proposed site of the Jasper Port.
Just across the Savannah River from the LNG terminal — where Georgia and South Carolina port authorities have agreed to purchase about 1,500 acres — is too close for comfort, board member Judy Jennings said at a news conference Wednesday.
The increased port traffic likely to be generated by a proposed harbor-deepening project also is incompatible with the LNG facility, Jennings said. A spill or a release from Elba or from an incoming tanker — either accidental or as a result of terrorism — could put anyone within a mile or more in grave danger.
LNG is a methane gas cooled to minus-260 degrees, but the gas will not burn in its liquid state. However, if a ship transporting the frozen gas upriver failed, or the plant was breached, the resulting vapor cloud could spread and ignite.
Citing industry standards from the Society of International Gas Terminal and Tanker Operations, Jennings said that LNG terminals are discouraged from being built where vapors from a spill could affect people, on long narrow inland waterways, on the outside curve of a waterway and where they conflict with other current and future waterway uses.
Elba flunks on all measures, she said.
“This is, by their own regulations, an inappropriate place for LNG,” Jennings said. “The state can give up the benefits of growing ports, or it can host El Paso and Qatar Gas. The industry itself frowns on doing both.”
El Paso spokesman Bill Baerg said by telephone from Houston that the Elba facility has met all regulatory standards since it was built in the 1970s, and it continues to do so today.
El Paso Corp. is a member of the Society of International Gas Terminal and Tanker Operations, but that group is an industry association, not a regulatory body.
Baerg also countered Jennings’ assertion that Elba, first built in 1978 and then mothballed from 1980 to 2001, wouldn’t be approved to be constructed from scratch today.
“In fact, terminals have been approved and constructed in Texas in areas that would be similar to this situation,” he said.
Elba is one of only a handful of land-based LNG import terminals in the U.S. The federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved about 40 new terminals around the nation, but analysts believe only about 12 to 14 will be built. In many parts of the nation, plans for new LNG facilities have encountered local opposition.
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