Gas Export Terminal Draws Opposition From Marylanders, Faith Groups
The shale gas boom in the U.S. has used unconventional drilling practices like fracking to lower natural gas prices, to increase supply, and to soon transform America into a net gas exporter. This last development has elicited a huge controversy, and ground zero could be the small town of Lusby on Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay.
That’s the home of a proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal called Cove Point. Dominion Energy has received conditional approval to convert the site’s existing import facility into an export terminal from the Department of Energy, FERC, and a key state regulatory body. But local opposition to the proposed project is mounting.
On Sunday, July 13, there will be a rally on the Mall in Washington, D.C., organized by a host of green groups, billed as the “first national rally to stop fracked gas exports at Cove Point.” They want FERC to decide not to give the project final approval. Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said in May that the risk of a fire or explosion at the facility to nearby houses was too great: “if anything goes off site … homes are going to be incinerated. They’re just too close.”
A report commissioned by nearby residents and Tidwell’s group highlights the risks posed by the plant to homes within 0.8 miles from its borders. Though the LNG industry has a very safe track record, the consequences of an accident at an LNG facility would be dire. A 2004 Energy Department study suggested that a catastrophic leak and ignition at an LNG plant would cause a fireball hot enough to melt steel at 1,200 feet and give second-degree burns a mile away.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/12/3459556/opposition-gas-exports-maryland/
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