
Why's a Big Red Tanker Drifting Near Boston? - protomyth
https://gcaptain.com/whys-a-big-red-tanker-drifting-near-boston/
======
nck4222
>But as pipeline projects in New England face legal delays and public
opposition

They're talking about the northern pass, a proposed 200 mile pipeline from
Canada, through the White mountain national forest in to New England.

I know the region has energy and cost issues, but there has to be a better way
than to put protected national land at risk.

We also recently had a "catastrophic failure", that caused a dozen explosions
in homes, killed one, and caused 40 house fires.

It didn't rally a lot of support for natural gas expansion.

~~~
danjayh
> there has to be a better way than to put protected national land at risk.

Please explain where the high risk is ... explosions in the middle of nowhere
aren't going to hurt much, and if their are leaks, the gas will simply vent
into the atmosphere rather than cause the kind of damage that oil spills do.

Seems like firing up coal plants in heavily populated regions (the current
alternative) is worse. In terms of heat and power generation in cloudy
regions, natural gas is vastly superior to everything except nuclear for
cleanliness and co2/gigawatt-hour... and if cost is considered, it beats out
nuclear too.

~~~
colanderman
Natural gas leaks kill trees. It's a big problem around Boston. E.g.:
[https://arlington.wickedlocal.com/news/20180726/guest-
column...](https://arlington.wickedlocal.com/news/20180726/guest-column-gas-
leaks-causing-tree-deaths-in-center) and
[https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2015/11/27/gas-
leak...](https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2015/11/27/gas-leaks-a-
hidden-culprit-for-dead-trees/)

~~~
asdfadsfgfdda
This is not a problem for a gas transmission pipeline. Gas leaks are a problem
for low-pressure (a few psi) distribution pipes. There is simply too much pipe
to find and repair every leak, and low pressure means low leak flow rate.

A gas transmission pipeline is hundreds of times higher pressure, they will
shut down a pipeline as soon as a leak is detected.

~~~
smolder
They should fix the leaking broken pipes under cities before adding new ones.
I realize they're different things but there are _plenty_ of reasons not to
trust energy companies to maintain infrastructure adequately.

~~~
rolandog
Any public company has an incentive to cut costs, so I'd imagine that a
federal company would have higher standards.

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favorited
I remember when they opened that offshore LNG port – they built it when energy
prices were through the roof, and everyone expected LNG imports to remain
profitable.

They built the port miles offshore because MA was banning harbor-side
offloading of LNG due to concerns of accidents or attacks on LNG tankers. But
by the time they completed it, hydraulic fracking had become so successful
that LNG prices collapsed and no one wanted to import it anymore.

[https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/01/23/offshore-
gas...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/01/23/offshore-gas-
terminals-mass-bust-far/Qu8dyZzF6yBNAsDNaTT1ZJ/story.html)

~~~
Nicholas_C
The same thing happened with the Cheniere Energy in Louisiana but due to the
location they were able to turn it into an export facility.

~~~
Scoundreller
Lucky. It’s not cheap/easy to convert from LNG import to LNG export.

------
craftyguy
Here's the non-blogspam original source:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-22/two-
month...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-22/two-month-window-
for-priciest-u-s-gas-keeps-this-tanker-adrift)

------
newnewpdro
"On Feb. 1, when Exemplar and Express were simultaneously berthed at the
terminal, they sent enough fuel to run all of New England’s gas-fired
generators for the day, according to Oliver Simpson, vice president of
Excelerate’s commercial operations"

This statement says nothing of what proportion of the tanker capacities was
consumed in that day. Anyone know?

It says nothing more than they fulfilled a single day of gas-fired generators
needs, which by itself doesn't sound worthwhile.

~~~
hindsightbias
Ship capacity:
[https://excelerateenergy.com/fleet/](https://excelerateenergy.com/fleet/)

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported Tuesday that demand for
natural gas in New England registered at 4.34 billion cubic feet per day and
that the regional pipeline was operating at 77.1 percent capacity. The agency
said that during a brief cold snap in January, "increased heating demand
strained the natural gas system as natural gas consumption in the region, on
January 21, 2019, reached their highest level this winter."

[https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2019/02/19/natural-g...](https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2019/02/19/natural-
gas-hookups-off-limits-in-more-mass-towns.html)

~~~
Scoundreller
Ships capacities are 138k-150k m^3.

Multiply by 35 to get cubic feet, and we get about 5m cubic feet per ship, or
1% of a day’s demand if my math is correct.

~~~
singlow
Haven't checked the math but are you accounting for Liquid->Gas expansion?

~~~
singlow
If the figures for Boston's consumption are for gaseous methane and LNG
expands 600x then you would have ~6 days supply.

------
nobrains
Related: See this 13 minute video about how Qatar became really rich:
[https://youtu.be/yFpHUzNomlc](https://youtu.be/yFpHUzNomlc)

 _(Summary: Its by developing technology for storing and exporting liquefied
natural gas)_

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leeoniya
"The Northeast also can’t receive gas from other U.S. states by ship because
of a 1920 law that prohibits foreign-flagged vessels from moving between
American ports."

wat?

~~~
NortySpock
The Jones Act prohibits using a foreign vessel to ship things from one US port
to another. You can import or export on a foreign vessel, but you can't use a
(say) Panama-flagged ship to move stuff from New York to Boston.

Ships are subject to their country's rule and regulations; if a down-on-their-
luck country wants to look the other way on environmental hazards or lax
operating procedures on a ship, that ship can be run for cheaper than an
American ship.

If we didn't have the Jones Act, we'd be hard-pressed to justify having any
sort of merchant marine shipping at all -- foreign-flagged ships could
undercut even moving stuff up and down the coasts or waterways.

Still, it does come up often, especially during emergencies. For example, when
Puerto Rico had trouble getting goods shipped in after Hurricane Maria because
there weren't enough US cargo vessels on hand to move cargo from Florida to
Puerto Rico. The president at the time was criticized for not rapidly
suspending the Jones Act to allow foreign ships to move critical goods.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/us/jones-act-
waived.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/us/jones-act-waived.html)

[https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/10/25/what-
ever...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/10/25/what-everyone-got-
wrong-about-the-jones-act-hurricane-relief-and-puerto-rico/)

~~~
djakjxnanjak
Is it not possible for us to regulate the behavior of foreign-flagged ships as
a condition for allowing them to dock at US ports? This would seem to have
better implications than banning them entirely.

~~~
LeChuck
Indeed it is. See for example Paris MOU:

[https://www.parismou.org/](https://www.parismou.org/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_State_Control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_State_Control)

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megaremote
This is doing the same thing the Tesla Battery is doing in South Australia.

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thisisweirdok
This is mildly unrelated, but living in New England and being stuck with
shitty heating bills in January and February always makes me wonder what
things would be like if we had enough common sense to move to regions of the
country where heating isn't so vital. There's plenty of space out there.

Sure excessive heat is an issue, but if my heat goes off when it's 2°F I would
likely die within a day or two. Not in practice of course (thanks society!)
just in theory. I can withstand 102° heat just fine if water is available and
I'm a little careful.

~~~
tyingq
I remember a fair amount of older houses in New England had oil heating and
the cost was crazy high.

~~~
evandev
There are still many that have heating oil. I live in NH and have heating oil.
I also had heating oil while living in central PA.

~~~
mikeash
Virginia here, I just converted my house from oil to gas a few months ago.

Fun fact: heating oil is just diesel fuel. I ran out of oil a while before the
gas installation and didn’t want to pay for the minimum 150 gallon delivery
the local companies required, so I made it through by visiting the local gas
station with some gas cans a few times.

~~~
toast0
Heating oil is diesel fuel not legal for on highway vehicle use. It's fine to
buy diesel fuel taxed for vehicles and burn it in your heater though, but
you'll (eventually) get in a lot of trouble for doing it the other way.

~~~
mikeash
Oddly, getting it from the gas station was slightly cheaper per gallon. I
assume the cost of delivering to my house exceeded the tax for vehicle fuel.

