US agency opposes offshore LNG terminal

April 14, 2009|Associated Press

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. - The US Commerce Department announced its opposition yesterday to a massive floating liquefied natural gas terminal proposed for Long Island Sound.

Environmentalists hailed the decision as a victory over "the corporate Goliaths of our time." Politicians in New York and Connecticut have campaigned to stop what would have been the world's first floating liquefied natural gas terminal.

About the size of the Queen Mary 2, the terminal would be the length of four football fields, about eight stories high, and located nine miles off Long Island and 11 miles from the Connecticut coast. After Governor David Paterson of New York ruled against the project last year, Broadwater, a consortium of Shell Oil and TransCanada Pipelines Ltd., appealed to the US Commerce Department.

The department said the project's "adverse coastal impacts outweighed its national interest" and added that its location in an undeveloped area 70 miles east of Manhattan would undermine decades of federal, state, and local efforts to protect the region.

"Today's decision is the final nail in Broadwater's coffin," said US Representative Timothy Bishop, Democrat of New York. "The Department of Commerce has affirmed once and for all that Broadwater . . . fails basic safety and environmental tests"

Broadwater said that it was disappointed by the ruling, but that no decision has been made on how to proceed.