THE NEW YORK TIMES: Floating an Idea: “A recently announced plan to place a floating natural gas depot in the middle of Long Island Sound seemed so nakedly destructive to the environment that we were tempted to hit the pause button on our critical faculties and let this editorial write itself.”: “The group behind the project, Broadwater Energy - a partnership between the TransCanada Corporation of Calgary and Shell U.S. Gas and Power, a Houston-based affiliate of Royal Dutch/Shell - has powerful arguments on its side. Long Island needs energy, which has to come from somewhere.” (ShellNews.net) 5 Dec04

Published: December 5, 2004

A recently announced plan to place a floating natural gas depot in the middle of Long Island Sound seemed so nakedly destructive to the environment that we were tempted to hit the pause button on our critical faculties and let this editorial write itself.

The argument could not be simpler: that there is no place in the stressed-out sound for a hulking, permanent platform as long and tall as the Queen Mary 2, a monstrous installation that would handle - safely, we are told, but you never know - immense quantities of liquefied gas. We could easily say that ecological danger trumps energy demand, and scorn the proposal with a benign Nimbyism - regional self-interest magnified and ennobled by a concern for the great blue heron, the striped bass and the suffering lobster.

We reserve the right to make that argument. But it's early yet. First, let's get the debate rolling. We did not ask for this depot and we do not exactly welcome it. We are glad to see that environmentalists, regular citizens and elected representatives are as wary as we are about this proposal. Long Island Sound only decades removed from a near-death experience, when the cumulative effect of years of pollution and neglect caused oxygen levels to plummet in its western reaches, killing off appalling numbers of fish, lobsters and other marine creatures. The fragile, lovely Sound has responded to better stewardship, like recent efforts in New York City and the suburbs to curtail nitrogen and other contaminants, so it seems regressive in the extreme to consider using it as a platform, literally, for profit-making ventures by global energy companies.

We wish we had confidence that the relevant federal agencies - the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Army Corps of Engineers - would review this proposal with proper attention to the environmental, safety and even aesthetic concerns that it raises. But since we do not, and since local governments seem to have no say in the matter, that leaves the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to give this plan intense scrutiny, to make sure that the stewardship of a vital natural resource is not sacrificed to shortsighted business interests.

The group behind the project, Broadwater Energy - a partnership between the TransCanada Corporation of Calgary and Shell U.S. Gas and Power, a Houston-based affiliate of Royal Dutch/Shell - has powerful arguments on its side. Long Island needs energy, which has to come from somewhere.

The Long Island Power Authority knows this, and has made ambitious plans to increase its supply through new electrical cables, local power plants, wind farms and solar panels. As long as the island has no local sources of relatively cheap power - no Indian Point, no dams, no coal-fired power plants - as long as natural gas is in short supply, as long as energy from renewable sources remains marginal and conservation remains stuck in the dim recesses of our national conscience, as long as we cling to our desire for warm houses and big cars, we will not be able to wish away our energy supply problems.

Liquefied natural gas - easily shipped from markets all over the world, not combustible until warmed into gas again - could someday be an important part of the solution. The question will always be where to put the transfer stations. The Broadwater Energy project would be placed nine miles off Wading River in what passes for a remote part of Long Island Sound. Is it remote enough? That's one question to settle first.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/opinion/opinionspecial/05LI_gas.html