Liberty's Blog

Bp makes its Pitch for Bay Crossing LNG

Public hearing on LNG terminal draws a crowd

A public hearing on a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal on Pelican Island attracted about 300 island residents and stakeholders to the city's convention center Wednesday.

Equality and I went to the convention center to find out whats going on. It was also an opportunity to see the new Galveston Convention Center.

We liked the convention center. It has a feeling of old fashioned granduer that is worthy of Galveston The glass open lobby area opens into an expancive view of the gulf. We were greeted by thes people who were passing out 3" Stop sign stickers emblazzoned with "STOP LNG" Apparently "STOP" is an acronym for "Stop Terminal on Pelican". I'm not sure that their goal is to prevent the building of Bay Crossing or whether they just want to ensure that it is built and run to the safest standards. We think that the terminal just may be a good thing for Galveston. It is to be built on the furthest side away from the island giving oit some distance from populated areas. However there there are some questions that just don't have answers yet. Such as:

1. Where will the pipelines be run, under Galveston Bay? near the causeway?
2. They suggest that there will be 50 permenent employees. Given that most plants operate with at least 50 percent adminstrative personal that work straight shifts. that leaves 25 Operational people that would be shift workers. 4 shifts, and that leaves only 25 or 6 people per shift That doesn't sound like many people to react to an emerency that could quickly turn catastrophic. Aid from local emeregency services would have to arrive from the main Island. Most of the Landyrs restraunts have more employees. Although we suspect that there may be as many as 150 full time contractors covering such things as maintenance security, and janitorial services.
3. The access roads are narrow small roads, and access to Pelican Island is only available over the Navigation Commission's Draw Bridge. Galvestonians pay district taxes to cover operational cost of this bridge. Most Galvestonians rarely use this bridge, Most usage of this bridge during the construction will be for the construction of Bay Crossing.
   

It's going to be a long road till the first tanker pulls up to unload its cargo. We hope that BP and the regulatory agencys all do their jobs and give us the safest facility possible. We also want the the smallest impact on our lifestyle possible. We are a small island and we don't want anyone to change it to much.

posted by Liberty @ 6:10 AM