Shipping impacts left out of LNG report

Again, from Cassandra Profita at the Daily Astorian:

"Federal officials are not satisfied with the biological impact report submitted by Northern Star Natural Gas Co. for its proposed Bradwood Landing liquefied natural gas terminal, according to a document recently filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The Bradwood Landing report left out the impact of LNG ships on the Columbia River and in the Pacific Ocean and key details are missing from its mitigation plans, according to the filing, the result of a phone conversation among multiple agencies' officials and the company's contracted engineer. Because of the company's outstanding data issues, FERC project manager Paul Friedman said his agency, which will ultimately approve or deny the terminal siting request, has not set a project review schedule for other officials to follow."

Northern Star contends that

"...large vessel traffic on the Columbia River had already been assessed by other projects such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Channel Improvement Project, which considered the impacts of deepening the shipping channel for vessels traveling upriver. Northern Star did not feel the need to do another review based on the impacts of LNG vessels.

Nice try guys, but the Coast Guard begs to differ.

"Jack Hug, a Coast Guard attorney, told the company LNG ships are different types of vessels than those considered in the channel deepening project, and the review for the Corps project did not consider terrorist acts. Dean Amundson of the Coast Guard said the company's project raises its own potential issues of vessel traffic and ship strikes off the coast.

Cathy Tortorici, chief of the Oregon Coast and Lower Columbia branch of National Marine Fisheries Service, said her agency looked at the impact of dredging for the Corps project, but the dredging project was designed for existing ships on the river, and a change in the type of vessels on the river was never considered.

Officials concluded the company should address the increase in ship traffic caused by the project, which is expected to bring in three or four LNG ships a week, as well as the fact that LNG ships are different types of vessels, and generally larger, than other ships using the river."

According to the article, other LNG projects discuss the impacts of ship traffic within a 200-nautical-mile zone of the coast, but Northern Star did not. There is also a list of other aspects of the project that Northern Star avoided addressing in their plan.

Gee, unanswered questions, ducking responsibility for the impact of their project, ignoring the concerns of both the federal licensing agency and the Coast Guard, which is tasked with keeping our river secure. I feel so much better about the proposed plant now. Don't you?

Read the entire article here.