Irony is many of the workers lived in those communities because of the convenience & low cost... saved money than bought nicer homes in a better part of the city much farther away.
And you remind me of another point - I do not believe the 'big release' will be the problem though that is what everyone is hyping ... my guess is it is going to be the same as it is with all natural gas processing - the maintenance of seals & valves. It will be the little leaks that will kill. And it will probably happen long after the product has been unloaded & revaporized.
And while maybe I underestimated the risk of LNG... I think maybe you underestimate the risk of the lighter distillates & gasoline... again depending on where it happens and how much. Out in open water - not a big deal... disperse & not explode even if lit up.
But in a harbor or river with dockage and confined pockets & jetties - very big deal. I've read of accidents on the Illinois River where relatively small amounts of gasoline spilled (1000s of gallons not whole tankers) and that still had the response teams paranoid as hell and evacuating as the spill worked down stream until it dispersed...
Even though the cloud isn't as large as LNG... the distillate liquid flows out over the surface, evaporating slowly... under bridges & culverts it traps and if the mixture is right... it blows as badly as any combustible gas. The thing that is especially dangerous is the fact the ignition source can be hundreds of yards away and ignite a small quantity of the liquid... run along the surface of the water like a fuse and then only 'blow' the trapped pockets under bridges, docks, etc. like isolated bombs.
When I heard the Saudis were planning on a massive increase in refining capacity and plan to sell us 'finished' product as opposed to crude... my first thought was... I wonder where they plan to unload it. It better be well offshore. "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." - Peter Steiner
It does seem to make sense to put big plants that manipulate vast volumes of flammable or explosive materials away from inhabited areas... In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
also, has anyone a reading on the amount of energy used to compress these gases into their liquid state for storage and transport? how many BTU does it take to compress 1000 BTU of any of these liquid gases into their commercially usable form? just curious about the EROEI as usual... The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquified_natural_gas
as to the EROEI, I'd say from rough memory that you get on the other side (i.e. after liquifeaction, transport and regasification) 90%+ of the natural gas you put in, so it's not too bad as a transport chain. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
You might want to check out how large mogas imports already are. And I'd guess 90% of it goes to the USAC from Virginia north. Rest to USWC in summer.
