Boston Frets Over Terror Risk from Tankers
Date: 02-Jul-04
Country: USA
Author: Mark Wilkinson
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, strikes on America, the city has worried that an attack could set a tanker ablaze and devastate Boston's city center, which lies only a stone's throw from the tankers' route on the river.
But new security standards that came into effect yesterday at ports around the United States - and similar international rules - aim to fend off such threats with measures such as posting security guards on ships and ordering more surveillance at terminals like Boston's natural gas station.
"There is no 100 percent guarantee, but we're making it exceptionally difficult for anyone to conduct a successful attack on (liquefied natural gas) tankers," Joseph Higgins, chief of maritime homeland security at the Coast Guard in Boston, said in an interview.
"We have an excellent joint effort with Boston police because nobody wants to see anything happen to those tankers."
Frank Katulak, senior vice president of Tractebel, the energy company that brings the tankers into the harbor, said security measures already in place at the Distrigas facility near Boston as well as safety features on the tankers would make an attack very difficult.
"The probability (of an attack) is very low ... you would really need quite a lot to get through something like this," he said, explaining the ships' cargo is protected by four layers of steel and one of water.
But Bostonians remain worried.
Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is in high demand as a heating fuel and is combustible in its vaporized form. Boston is home to one of four LNG terminals in the United States and the only one within a densely populated area.
The tankers enter the city's waterways about once a week under close guard, typically flanked by a parade of tug boats and escorted by helicopters.
"It would be terrifying," said Boston resident Linda Stecker of a possible attack on a tanker. "The water is so close to the city that it would probably be devastating."
In fact, the U.S. government "learned that had one of the giant tankers blown up in the harbor, it would have wiped out downtown Boston," former U.S. counterterrorism official Richard Clarke wrote in his recent book "Against All Enemies."
Tankers carrying crude oil could pose a similar threat elsewhere in the United States. While the largest oil tankers unload their cargo at an offshore oil port off the coast of Louisiana, others enter ports in urban areas such as Houston in Texas and Long Beach, California.
TOLL IN THE THOUSANDS
Boston's fire department recently estimated that as many as 10,000 people could die if a gas tanker were set ablaze en route to the nearby gas facility in Everett, across the river from Boston, where the tankers are unloaded.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees the gas industry, did its own analysis and came to less dire conclusions. It contends the system is safe and dismisses contradictory findings, angering Boston officials and Massachusetts lawmakers.
"They think if a tanker is hit it could be a small fire. Doesn't sound to me like it'll be a small fire," Boston Deputy Fire Chief Joseph Fleming said in an interview. "It raises serious questions about whether they are doing their job of evaluating the risk and I'm not even sure they care about the risk."
The federal agency rebuffed the criticism. "If we didn't think it was safe, we'd say so," said Mark Robinson, director of the office of energy projects at FERC.
Tractebel's Katulak called the fire department's estimates "vastly overstated."
Liquefied natural gas is chilled to minus 259 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 161 degrees Celsius) before being shipped around the world aboard tankers from Algeria, Trinidad, Qatar and other exporting countries. While not flammable in its liquid form, it could be ignited as it vaporizes.
A blaze could almost instantly kill those in its vicinity and rapidly spread to the many residential and office buildings that line the river and harbor, t
