Aug 04 – GSD Says LNG Storage Location Shift Does Not Alter Consequences Of Accident
The GSD has said that the latest statement from the Chief Minister that the site now chosen by the Government to locate the LNG bunkering storage tanks will mean that no potential escape of LNG will reach residential areas “is nonsensical”. The Opposition argues that it is a statement made “without the benefit of an expert report” and follows “similar categorical assurances” in the past that these facilities are 100% safe when, according to the party, “as a matter of common sense it is obvious no one can guarantee that an accident will never occur.”
A statement released this morning ended: “That is why the debate has been about consequence if something does go wrong. The GSD has always accepted, as indeed is reflected in the Lloyds Register report, that mitigating measures can be put in place in order to reduce the risk as a low a reasonably practicable. The issue is the consequences of an accident if something does go wrong and whether we are prepared to accept risk however low. The site now chosen by the Government is barely 300 metres away from Waterport Terraces and not much more away from the Westside 1 and 2 land reclamation area. The Lloyds report is based on the premise that measures would be put in place to ensure that an escape of LNG would last between sixty seconds and five minutes. In other words, the entirety of the tanks would not be emptied. Even in that scenario, gas cloud models concluded that any escape would reach the land reclamation area from two sites at the Detached and the centre of the North Mole. Shifting the LNG storage facilities fifty metres to the North will not alter the propensity for an escape of gas to reach densely populated areas.”
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