Mobile Register, 10/21/03

Copyright 2003 Newhouse News Service

By BEN RAINES and BILL FINCH
Staff Reporter

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an obscure scientific study by a little-known Oklahoma consulting company has been widely used by federal officials to ease concern in U.S. communities about the dangers of liquefied natural gas.

But the study's mild assessment of LNG fire dangers is generating a growing controversy in the scientific community, and even the study's author acknowledged in an interview last week that it is being misused by federal officials.

Department of Energy officials and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission documents have promoted the Quest Consultants Inc. study as evidence that the public would have little to fear from any LNG tanker spills or resulting fires.

DOE officials have denied that they had anything to do with the Quest study, but Quest officials said they produced the study at DOE's request.

Don Juckett, who until September directed DOE's Office of Natural Gas and Oil Import and Export Activities, used the study recently to address concerns of Mobile, Ala., area residents about an ExxonMobil proposal to build an LNG shipping terminal on Mobile Bay. Another DOE official, Clifford Tomaszewski, said Juckett also has made presentations in the past three years using the Quest calculations to support reopening of LNG facilities in Boston and in Cove Point, Md.

"I talked to Don Juckett and told him I didn't think (the study's computations) were appropriate for many of the things they are being used for," said John Cornwell, the lead scientist on the Quest study of LNG fires. "Some of that modeling we did for DOE in hindsight, we should have done a more complete paper. ... I've learned you never write anything that you don't want public. We violated our own rules on that score."

Cornwell, contacted by the Mobile Register newspaper, said he believes his calculations are useful and valid in certain circumstances, but that his company needed to do more work on the topic of LNG fires.

He said he did the study on short notice, and was led to believe it would be employed in-house by federal agencies as one of several tools used to examine LNG fire scenarios. "These were approximations for their (the agencies') use; we were asked to provide some calculations very quickly," Cornwell said.

In Boston, the Quest study which has never been published in scientific journals apparently was used by DOE to suggest that a terrorist attack on an LNG tanker would result in only limited damage immediately around the ship. In stark contrast, published scientific studies have suggested that an LNG tanker fire could have disastrous consequences for densely populated neighborhoods around Boston Harbor.

"The fire that would ensue ... would be of unprecedented size and intensity," wrote James Fay, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a scientifically reviewed analysis of the Boston Harbor situation cited in a 2002 report to Congress. "At any point along the inner harbor route of ship travel from sea to berth, pool thermal fire radiation that can burn and even kill exposed humans, and ignite combustible buildings, will be experienced along and well inland from the waterfront."

Most published scientific studies, including a soon-to-be-released analysis by the federal government's own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, produce estimates of a potential LNG tanker fire that are five to six times larger than the Quest estimate.

If only a fraction of the 33 million gallons of LNG on board a tanker escaped onto the water, fires about a half-mile across could occur, throwing off searing heat up to a mile in any direction, according to estimates of the published scientific studies. The Quest study estimates that a similar quantity of LNG would produce fires less than 500 feet across, with a heat danger zone of less than a quarter-mile.

The actual Quest data have been publicly available only in correspondence between Quest and DOE, and circulated only among a handful of interested scientists. But the Quest conclusions have been widely cited in federal documents and in discussions by federal energy officials.

According to Quest officials, the estimates were commissioned to help determine whether it was safe to reopen Boston Harbor to LNG shipments following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Department of Energy later used those computations to argue that LNG shipments would pose only a limited threat to a nuclear plant near an LNG facility in Cove Point, Md.

This year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission cited the Quest computations in its decision to allow a new LNG terminal at Hackberry, La., near Lake Charles.

And in recent weeks, ExxonMobil officials referenced numbers virtually identical to Quest's computations when arguing that a "worst case" tanker spill in Mobile Bay would not harm surrounding communities.

ExxonMobil proposes to import super-cooled LNG from global sources via supertankers, which would offload their cargo at an onshore terminal where the LNG would be converted to the conventional vaporous form of natural gas, and piped to U.S. consumers.

Some local leaders say the facility would pose significant risks to the nearby Hollingers Island community, particularly if an LNG tanker were attacked by terrorists.

In two letters to DOE's Juckett, written in October 2002 and later made available to Mobile Register reporters, Quest officials highlighted how their results contrasted markedly with major scientific studies of LNG dangers.

Quest listed a "summary" of the other spill computations produced by the five published studies most frequently used by scientists in LNG-hazard research. The summary makes clear that those major studies all reach similar conclusions about the size of a fire produced by 6 million gallons of LNG which is about one-fifth of the contents of an LNG tanker. Each of those five studies estimate fires a half-mile or more in diameter, which means that severe thermal effects second-degree burns after a few seconds of exposure, for example would spread at least a mile from the center of the fire itself.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which makes recommendations to other federal agencies on how to handle potential LNG spills, said its new study of LNG will estimate fire sizes in the same range as the other published studies. NOAA researcher Bill Lehr said his agency's latest recommendations, which are being reviewed by other scientists, support in large measure the assumptions and conclusions of the previous published studies.

The Quest correspondence with the DOE, on the other hand, estimates a fire of 470 feet in diameter, or only one-fifth the size of the smallest fire envisioned by the published studies. The severe heat effects of the fire predicted by Quest would extend only about 1,770 feet, the Quest letters said.

"It's quite obvious that if you use any of the published literature ... it's going to be a much bigger fire than Quest's numbers suggest," said Fay, the MIT professor who wrote one of the studies cited in the Quest letters. "Their model has never been published or peer-reviewed" by other scientists.

Because Quest's numbers are so out of line with other studies, and because the company's assumptions and results have never been peer-reviewed, the "estimates must be considered to lack the credibility necessary for public confidence," said Jerry Havens, a University of Arkansas chemical engineering professor whose scientific work lies at the heart of federal regulations for LNG terminals.

The Mobile Register discovered numerous federal and LNG industry documents that cite the Quest numbers. None of the documents acknowledged the existence of published and peer-reviewed scientific studies, or mentioned that other studies predict fires five to six times larger than Quest predicts.

Juckett, the DOE official whose name turns up frequently in association with the Quest numbers, retired from the agency sometime in the past month, according to agency officials in Washington.

On Oct. 17, in response to questions from reporters, DOE press officer Drew Malcomb attempted to distance the agency from the Quest study.

In written responses to questions about the Quest calculations, Malcomb said the agency could not comment because DOE "did not commission or release the study" and was "not involved" with it in any way.

But in written comments to the Mobile Register, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission officials referring to the environmental impact statement for the Hackberry, La., LNG terminal explained that "the Quest study was performed for the U.S. Department of Energy."

A Shell Oil-sponsored study last year of an LNG facility proposed for Vallejo, Calif., also cited the Quest calculations, and stated that they were developed for the DOE in 2001.

A PowerPoint computer presentation called "Properties of LNG" which references the Quest "model," lists DOE's Juckett as the author and bears the seal of the Department of Energy is available on the Internet. That presentation, which also is credited to Juckett in a recent Congressional Research Service report, states that DOE "commissioned the models" in coordination with other agencies. As of Tuesday, the presentation could be viewed on the Web at www.borderpowerplants.org/pdf docs/DOE LNG accident impact 2002.pdf.

The Mobile Register has learned that other LNG scientists also contacted Juckett and expressed concerns about the Quest data. One of those scientists said he was told that the numbers were going to be used only internally by the DOE.

But the numbers are clearly being promoted by many parties. In addition to Juckett's multiple presentations, Shell Oil, ExxonMobil and Chevron have all used the Quest calculations in company statements or in commissioned studies.

Perhaps the best known and most consequential use of the Quest calculations occurred in 2001, shortly after the Boston LNG terminal was shut down by the Coast Guard after the Sept. 11 attacks. LNG tankers have to transit through downtown Boston to reach the LNG terminal in Everett, Mass.

Media accounts from the Associated Press, Boston newspapers and shipping industry publications reported that the Coast Guard lifted its ban on LNG shipments into Boston after consulting with the DOE and local fire and police officials. Boston's Fire Commissioner Paul Christian and Police Supt. James Hussey were opposed to the decision, and remain outspoken critics of the LNG terminal.

Shortly after the Coast Guard decision, the mayors of Boston and Everett sought a court injunction against further shipments to the terminal, warning of the risk of a terrorist attack. The terminal remained closed until the end of October 2001, when a federal judge ruled that the shipments could resume.

DOE's Tomaszewski said Juckett presented the Quest data at a meeting in Boston with officials from the Coast Guard and other federal agencies.

The DOE's Malcomb refused to comment on whether the Quest data had been presented in federal court during the hearings on reopening the LNG terminal.

"I cannot help you with the Quest study," Malcomb wrote the Register. "The DOE member who told you that DOE was involved was misinformed."

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