LNG company suggests small ships, more trips

WASHINGTON -- Six months after Massachusetts' congressional delegation triumphantly declared that saving a narrow bridge would keep liquefied natural gas tankers out of Fall River, the company that wants to build a distribution terminal in the city says it has a solution: smaller ships making more frequent trips.

Weaver's Cove Energy Corp. said yesterday that it can still build an LNG terminal and ship the supercooled, condensed gas through Fall River even if the old Brightman Street Bridge over the Taunton River is preserved. Last summer, Representative James P. McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, slipped language into a federal transportation bill requiring the bridge to be preserved for pedestrians and bike riders. After President Bush signed the package into law, opponents of the project hailed the bridge as a crafty means to stop it from being built.

The drawbridge has a 98-foot gap, too narrow for conventional 145-foot-wide LNG tankers. The bridge, which is being replaced, was slated for demolition when the company first proposed building an LNG terminal in Fall River. Weaver's Cove said yesterday that it will commission smaller, alternative tankers that can transport LNG but are just 82 feet wide, thin enough to slip through the old bridge.

''Should the Brightman Street Bridge remain in place, Weaver's Cove intends to deploy a fleet of smaller, specialized LNG tankers which will be capable of transiting the old bridge," the company said.

Because the ''mini tankers" hold about 55,000 cubic meters of LNG, compared with 145,000 cubic meters in conventional tankers, the company told the Coast Guard it will need two or three times as many deliveries -- as often as three times a week. But the company said it would be happy to return to its original plan to use conventional ships with fewer trips if its foes relent and take the old bridge down.

Local leaders reacted with outrage.

''All of the concerns I initially had are made worse by plans for more ships making more trips," McGovern said. ''More ships means more safety risks for the people of the Greater Fall River area. It means more expenses for the Coast Guard in security. It means more air pollution and environmental harm. It means, frankly, more targets" for terrorists.

And Fall River's mayor, Ed Lambert, who has fought the project, said the city would ask the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to start the application process over because the changes in the project make it vastly different from the original Weaver's Cove proposal.

''We have only just begun this fight," Lambert said. ''This is not a rational energy policy, to allow a facility like this to be placed so close to a populated area."

The shift to smaller tankers would clear a major hurdle, but several obstacles remain.

Weaver's Cove Energy needs approval from the US Army Corps of Engineers for dredging, and has to get several permits from Massachusetts. In addition, the Coast Guard must approve a security plan, and last month opponents of the project appealed the permitting decision in federal court.

The move by Weaver's Cove, a joint venture of the Amerada Hess Corp. and a private energy shipping firm called Poten & Partners, is the latest escalation in a pitched battle over a proposal to build an LNG terminal on an industrial tract in Fall River.

Demand for clean-burning natural gas has been soaring, and Weaver's Cove is the first of about five dozen applications to build new terminals around North America to distribute the gas. To transport the gas, energy companies super-cool it into liquid form and put it on ships and trucks.

Worry about the security risks posed by LNG transportation has also soared since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The risks have received acute attention in New England because the location of an LNG terminal in Everett requires tankers to pass by downtown Boston.

A Coast Guard study has found that an attack on an LNG tanker could trigger a massive thermal blast, igniting buildings for a third of a mile and burning residents as far as a mile away. About 9,000 people live and work within a mile of the proposed facility.

But Weaver's Cove spokesman Jim Grasso said that New England must increase its supply of natural gas, especially to heat homes during winter. Nobody wants regional infrastructure built near their homes, Grasso said, but the Fall River site -- a former oil tank farm -- is ideal: A designated port, it is close to an interstate and an existing natural gas pipeline.

''We know we can do it safely," Grasso said.

But McGovern and Lambert questioned whether Weaver's Cove is bluffing about using smaller tankers to buy time while the company lobbies Congress to undo the Brightman Street bridge provision McGovern installed in the federal transportation bill. They speculated that the higher cost of more frequent deliveries might be unprofitable.

Grasso, however, said the mini tankers proposal was no bluff: The company's federal permit allows for more frequent deliveries, he said, and it can pass on any higher costs to New England consumers.

''This project is going to move forward and come to fruition," though the company would prefer to use standard tankers, Grasso said. ''However, if the authorities don't want to go with the original plan, that's fine. We have come up with a practical solution that will allow us to build the facility."

This week, in notifying the Coast Guard that it intended to commission a fleet of skinny ships, Weaver's Cove submitted a navigation safety report. It found that, if both bridges remain in place, sailing the smaller tankers safely downriver ''is feasible with certain limitations." But it won't be simple.

Because the openings between the Brighton Street bridge and its replacement do not line up, ships would have to pass through the first drawbridge, then stop and wait for tugboats to maneuver it into position to navigate the second bridge.

''When transiting through the existing bridge during the inbound transit, the ship is out of necessity headed directly at the western span of the new bridge," the report cautioned. ''. . . [M]aneuvers that require ships to be driven directly at objects while at speed will be inviting trouble."

Critics of the project said the report supports their contention that Weaver's Cove should have to scrap the project and start again.

In its statement, the company conceded that the decision to use smaller tankers ''represents a less than optimal outcome," but ''this approach will permit the company to continue advancing its project."

The company has won two other battles in recent weeks: The Navy had objected that the transit of LNG tankers through Narragansett Bay would interfere with its nearby weapons tests, but last month it withdrew its complaint. FERC then denied a petition to reconsider its decision to grant the permit.