Addressing the issue is particularly important locally given the publicity surrounding the frequent tanker deliveries of liquified natural gas (LNG) through Boston harbor to a terminal in Everett.

Natural gas is an attractive alternative to comparable fossil fuels for several reasons. There are substantial unexploited reserves throughout the US, both on land and offshore. Historically, petroleum has been the commodity of choice and the remaining supplies of natural gas provide an economic incentive to nudge our consumption in that direction.

As for environmental considerations, it is reasonably benign. Refined natural gas is 99 percent methane. Methane (CH4) is the simplest hydrocarbon and has been touted as "clean burning" in that it does not leave behind the trail of soot, sulphur, particulates, etc. that coal, diesel, gasoline and home heating oil are known for.

While air quality would suffer less as natural gas replaces other fuels, this will not alleviate the relentlessly increasing artificial release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Another downside is that misplaced euphoria surrounding this "plentiful and clean burning" fuel can easily postpone and discourage conservation, which still lies at the heart of thoughtful environmentalism.

Boston and LNG

About one year ago, Boston Mayor Tom Menino grabbed headlines with his "demand" that all LNG shipments through Boston Harbor cease immediately, given public safety issues surrounding the volatility of the substance. This grandstanding was Menino's career-defining publicity stunt. Cessation of deliveries to the region would have effectively shut down the gas supply and we'd have frozen to death before the January thaw.

In today's infrastructure, we deal with some extremely hazardous commodities. Among these are hydrogen, the "fuel" of fuel cells, another of those bandwagon energy panaceas; compressed oxygen; the commonplace gasoline; electricity propelling the T and delivering convenience to the home. And, simple hydrocarbon or not, natural gas is clearly among the most hazardous substances around.

Perhaps George Bush blundered terribly in initiating a war in Iraq on fabricated rationale, massacred the Bill of Rights and spent the past five years lying every day about something. Still "terrorism" has landed in the American psyche, and now we do have to remain alert to vulnerable potential targets such as Everett and sea routes through convoluted passages such as Boston Harbor.

Natural gas is intensely volatile; therein lies its value. It is piped under the city streets to our apartments where it heats our water, warms the air and cooks our food. It is delivered to Boston via specialized insulated tankers, often from refineries in Trinidad. It is shipped in liquid form (at -260F) since it is non-volatile in that state and takes up only 1/600 the volume as in its gaseous state. After the tankers arrive at the Everett terminal, the LNG is turned back into gas and delivered to the pipeline infrastructure.

What do we have to worry about....

What gets most publicity is our obsession with any potential deliberate act of sabotage around a site with such explosive capacity. But even in a pre 9/11 world—with a substantial increase in tanker deliveries, each tanker 900 feet long carrying something like 30 million gallons of product—threading the needle through a twisting channel 1200 feet wide in the middle of our urban area should be adequate grounds to begin to seriously consider an alternate site.

No political office holder today will ignore legitimate hazards within his or her jurisdiction. Enormous concentrations of natural gas are certainly potentially hazardous, but some of the scenarios laid out thus far appear to be borne of Hollywood or the Japanese horror movie industry of the 1950's. The Godzilla syndrome.

The most likely scenario and that greatly preferred over all others is that LNG shipments will enter the harbor as scheduled without collisions, groundings, high seas piracy, deliberate acts of sabotage or other maritime mishap, and the product will be gassified at the terminal without incident.

But what can go wrong.....

From that hoped for benigh scenario, incidents range from the troubling to the truly horrific. Now for the Godzilla scenario. LNG is so cold and dense it cannot burn, cannot ignite etc. However, if it were to escape, it would rapidly gasify and if the lighter than air gas rising from the LNG were to encounter an ignition source, it would burn with intensity. An LNG spill on land at the terminal could be contained. If a tanker hull were to breach, the LNG would pour out, spreading without contianment, probably freezing the water around the ship and rapidly evaporating. At that point it would be vulnerable to an intense conflagation should the plume of rising volatile gas encounter an ignition source. We would then be in a state of pool fire, this easily the worst of the "worst case scenarios."

These incident scenarios, while coming from experts in engineering and the sciences, are compilations of assumptions, estimates, calculations, and some empirical evidence. There is some degree of uncertainty as to how a major spill would play out in the real world. No one can conduct a scaled down laboratory experiment and predict the outcome of a full scale uncontrolled event.

The general assessment from experts is that such a fire would be so large and so hot, it could not be extinguished until the fuel ran out. While such a scenario might be attractive to a potential saboteur, the double-hulled tankers are so impervious to attack, it would take a mine the size of a volkswagen or an antiship missile carried on a tractor trailer to rupture the cargo vessels.

Nevertheless, and with reasonable good cause, each tanker delivery to Everett is accompanied by a convoy of Coast Guard, Boston Fire and Police vessels, helicopters, plain clothes police on site and police dive teams checking the site in advance. In other words, we are spending unusual amounts of money keeping this operation trouble-free.

So the question is, should we move the LNG terminal away from deep in the heart of Boston Harbor? In the interest of public safety, probably. But to do so there has to be some agreement on where to move it to. One site already cleared by the Federal Government is Fall River. How moving the location to a site requiring tanker passage up through Narragansett bay is preferable to the site in Everett is difficult to fathom, but this is the Bush administration and the unfathomable has become so commonplace we hardly take note of it.

One alternative is to get it the hell away from Boston, to a less populated site, say Maine. Though I live in Boston now, I am from Maine and folks up there have an impression of Massachusetts residents and our "let's just stick it up there" mentality.

Another possibility—the harbor islands, not a good precedent—putting an LNG terminal in a park, but better than Maine and better than Fall River and better than the weaving route to Everett. Public safety and security concerns would be substantially alleviated. Yes, I know, it would disrupt the Menino—Save the harbor agenda of lining the harbor with luxury waterfromt condos, but after all, Boston does have an historical heritage as a major working port and the penthouse dwellers might see the tankers every two weeks or so, but.....

The offshore option

Another alternative is an offshore site, and the site in mind would be some 12 miles off Gloucester, near an existing and recently completed natural gas pipeline. An offshore site would have virtually no security concerns, no fire would reach land. But there are no free lunches and an offshore site has some baggage.

Naturally, it would be more expensive to build a gasification facility or in fact build anything offshore. So industry is balking as cost eat into profits. Gasification could actually be accommodated on board the vessels, with the gaseous methane pumped down to an undersea holding tank farm adjacent to the pipeline.

Naturally, environmental issues crop up. Thirty million gallons of liquid at -260F would have to be warmed substantially by what would amount to a bath in the ocean and this would certainly cool the local water during each tanker delivery.

While posing a temporary fire hazard until the evaporating gas dissipated, an offshore LNG spill would pose little environmental menace. Some frozen water perhaps, but no crude oil slick, no oil covered birds or seals and a day later there would likely be no obvious signs of anything amiss.

If private industry were encouraged and did in fact build an offshore terminal, they would be obliged to try to recover costs as quickly as possible. This in effect means consumption would be encouraged in order to sell more product, etc.

Discouraging overconsumption in order to promote a conservation ethic stands in the way of the corporate business model, so the two sides would begin butting heads from the get go.

There is no reason the state of Massachusetts should not pick up the ball and build this critical part of the infrastructure on behalf of the public. In that way, a conservation agenda could be an integral part of the overall operation of our future natural gas economy.

The writer, who is Secretary of the Mystic River Green-Rainbow local, has worked in the offshore oil industry for many years.