A prized energy source, or potent terror target? | csmonitor.com

Push to build LNG terminals is under fire

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

In the hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, Richard Clarke, then America’s top counterterrorism official, rushed to get the US Coast Guard to close Boston Harbor. His main fear: Al Qaeda might attack a huge liquid natural gas tanker as it glided past downtown buildings.

Mr. Clarke professes to know what few did: that Al Qaeda had used LNG tankers to smuggle agents into Boston from Algeria. He also knew that each ship held as much energy as a nuclear weapon. ‘Had one of the giant tankers blown up…, it would have wiped out downtown Boston,’ Clarke said in his book ‘Against All Enemies.’

His assertions add a grave new concern to a push to triple the number of LNG terminals in North America. An explosion of just one bulbous tank on an LNG ship could produce a fire half a mile wide, experts say. Along a densely populated shoreline, they add, such an inferno could be disastrous.”

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