Howe Sound is the right place for Woodfibre LNG

Guest Commentary
By Anthony Gelotti

As a professional with more than 35 years of experience internationally in the oil and gas industry, and as the president of Woodfibre LNG Limited, I am concerned by activists who say BC’s Howe Sound is no place for LNG. While I respect the critics’ right to share their opinions, as a professional, I can assure your readers that Howe Sound is the right place for an LNG facility.
When our ownership was looking for the right location to build and operate a modestly sized LNG processing and export terminal in British Columbia, the Woodfibre site in Howe Sound was by far the best fit. The brownfield site, located about seven kilometres southwest of Squamish, B.C. was home to pulp mill operations for 100 years, is zoned industrial, already has access to a natural gas pipeline and electricity from BC Hydro, and has a deep water port on a waterway that for decades has been used for commercial shipping.
Howe Sound is also the right place for an LNG facility because Woodfibre LNG Limited’s purchase of the former pulp mill site means we can contribute to the revitalization of Howe Sound. Thousands of truckloads of contaminated sediment and woodchips have already been removed from the foreshore of the site; we’re committed to removing about 3,000 creosote coated piles, which can harm fish; and, we’re committed to creating a ‘green zone’ around Mill Creek, which runs through the middle of the project site. All of these measures will help improve habitat for freshwater and marine fish, including herring, and will ultimately improve Howe Sound.
LNG shipping is safe for Howe Sound. LNG has one of the best safety records in the shipping industry; 50 years + of LNG shipping and not one incident of loss of containment at sea because LNG ships are designed for safety and their crews are some of the most highly trained in the industry. Plus, in the very unlikely event of a spill, there is no environmental clean-up associated with LNG. LNG is natural gas cooled until it becomes a liquid. It’s not stored under pressure. When exposed to air, LNG quickly returns to a gas and dissipates so it doesn’t mix with water or land as the authors’ suggest. In order for a fire to happen, a number of things must occur simultaneously: there must be a loss of containment of LNG, the right fuel to air ratio (5% to 15%), and there must be a spark. These conditions are highly unlikely to occur given the complex containment systems, double hull protection and emergency shut off and fire protection systems on LNG carriers, local marine expertise, and the weather conditions that are common in a large fjord like Howe Sound.
At Woodfibre LNG, safety is our number one priority, so we hired Abbot Risk Consulting Ltd (ARC), one of the world’s leading safety experts, to do a review of a quantitative risk assessment of our project to ensure we have the right measures in place to safety manage even the most unlikely event. Case in point, should our project go ahead, each LNG carrier entering Howe Sound (three to four per month), will travel at 8 to 10 knots, will be accompanied by at least three tugboats, at least one of which will be tethered to the carrier, and we will have two BC Coast Pilots on board, who are experts on our coast. Woodfibre LNG is also an Associate Member of the Society of International Gas Tanker and Terminal Operators Ltd. (SIGTTO), an international non-profit organization dedicated to protecting and promoting the safe and reliable operation of gas tankers and terminals within a sound environment. And we are not stopping there – we are also undergoing Transport Canada’s voluntary TERMPOL review, which brings marine experts together to examine shipping for our project, and we have already committed to implementing any recommendations that result from this comprehensive technical review.
At Woodfibre LNG Limited, we believe we can have responsible economic development and be good stewards of the environment, and we are not compromising on safety. With respect to critics, B.C.’s Howe Sound is the right place for Woodfibre LNG.
Anthony “AG” Gelotti is the President, of Woodfibre LNG Limited.