Regional approach urged on LNG

WASHINGTON – New England lawmakers on Wednesday urged Department of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to adopt a new regional approach to siting liquefied natural gas terminals, saying the current process is seriously flawed.

“The current process is broken, costly and just plain dumb,” said U.S. Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass.

Bodman listened to their concerns during a private meeting at the Capitol, but made no promises, the lawmakers said.

“At this point all he agreed to do is listen to us and to get back to us,” said U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., at a press conference with other lawmakers after the meeting.

Frank and several other Bay State and Rhode Island lawmakers are embroiled in the fight over a proposed LNG terminal in Fall River, Mass., seeking to kill the project due to public safety fears and other concerns.

Frank said he does not necessarily oppose a new LNG facility in New England, but he objects to the current federal approval process because it is on a project-by-project basis with no comprehensive planning for the region.

“This is not an anti-LNG thing,” he said.

The current approval process is conducted in “essentially a random fashion” by federal agencies with little regard to regional energy needs, Frank said.

“There’s no coordination, there’s no overall plan,” said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

There are currently more than five pending LNG proposals in Massachusetts alone, Kerry said. But since federal regulators have not figured out the region’s overall energy needs, there is no way to determine which new LNG facilities are needed, he added.

“It makes no sense to consider them one-by-one,” the senator said.

U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., said he fears the heavy security and traffic jams on bridges resulting from LNG tankers traversing Narragansett Bay would prove disastrous to his state’s tourism and hospitality industries.

“The fact that we have a fragmented, hodge-podge approval system for LNG without looking at it in the context of our overall energy needs really, to me, is quite startling,” said Kennedy. “I am going to do everything I can to defeat LNG from coming up Narragansett Bay.”

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri have also voiced support for a regional approach to LNG siting.