The 1000 yds idea is a good one... but I wouldn't want to be 1000 yds from any facility including the plant I used to run... we had to 'evacuate' a couple thousand residents at least twice while I worked there... people in a large mobile home park down the street and a neighborhood just north. No incident but hairy.

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.

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