“We finally put the stake through the vampire’s heart,’’ US Representative Barney Frank said in an interview yesterday. “It’s a good sign for citizens… . There is the idea the corporations always win.’’
The state’s only onshore LNG terminal — in Everett, just north of Boston — became a national symbol of the dangers of putting such facilities near populated areas after 9/11 highlighted the risks of a terrorist attack or accident. But because the proposed Fall River plant was under federal, not state, jurisdiction, an almost unanimous bipartisan political effort failed to halt it.
Hess now says it will sell the property, and yesterday afternoon Mayor William A. Flanagan said Fall River will look to buy it to “control our own destiny’’ in developing the city’s waterfront.
A flurry of New England LNG projects were proposed in the early and mid-2000s, including one on a Boston Harbor Island and several in Maine. None has been built on land, although two offshore ports were built about 10 miles off Gloucester, where LNG is vaporized on ships and pumped through an underwater pipe to shore.
Hess had offered several versions of the project, most borne out of attempts to sidestep opponents’ maneuvers to block the terminal. The latest plan was for up to 70 LNG tankers a year to travel through Narragansett Bay to berth in Mount Hope Bay. From there, an underwater pipe would carry the liquefied gas more than 4 miles up the Taunton River to a storage facility at a former oil terminal. Then it would be vaporized to go to homes and businesses or be shipped as a liquid by truck.
Yesterday, Gordon Shearer, president of Hess LNG, said the decision had nothing to do with the years of opposition, but rather the ability to make a profit. In recent years, new drilling technologies called hydraulic fracturing have freed vast US reserves of gas trapped in rock in states such as Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Texas. As a result, domestic gas prices have fallen dramatically, making imported LNG less competitive.
