PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Natural gas distributor KeySpan Corp. and gas importer BD LNG Services plan to bring liquefied natural gas by ship to the Port of Providence, possibly by the end of next year.

Representatives from KeySpan, explaining their plans to the state’s Emergency Management Council on Tuesday, said they intend to replace the 2,000 tanker trucks that bring liquefied natural gas to the Providence facility each year with marine deliveries.

KeySpan officials said they will be spending about $60 million upgrading their Providence facility, but they won’t be expanding it, or erecting any new tanks.

“What we are proposing to do, in a nutshell, is change the mode of delivery,” said Taylor Caswell, director of government relations for KeySpan.

The plan requires federal approval.

Caswell said the changes would allow the facility to play a greater role in supplying energy in the region and would help stabilize natural gas prices.

Right now, only four sites in the continental United States accept liquefied natural gas by ship. They are in the Boston suburb of Everett, Mass., and ports in Lake Charles, La., Cove Point, Md., and Elba Island, Ga.

The Massachusetts site is the oldest of the four, and the only one in a commercial and residential hub.

That has been a concern for some Boston area officials and residents.

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino sued to keep LNG tankers out of the harbor after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks – even after the Coast Guard said they could safely transit. He lost that court fight but maintains the ships should not be coming into a metropolitan area.

Some studies have shown an attack by a missile or boat bomb could spill half the cargo over the water, causing a fire that would burn people and buildings a half-mile away. But a study paid for by the industry and used by the Coast Guard in approving a safety plan for Boston found the burn zone would be contained to a much smaller area.

James Fay, a professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has predicted parts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts could be devastated by an attack on LNG tankers in Narragansett Bay. He has said there would be a risk to residents of Jamestown and Newport, where the ships would come within two-thirds of a mile of the Rhode Island shoreline.

Others have criticized Fay’s assessment, saying it is based on improper assumptions.

At Tuesday’s meeting, KeySpan representatives said the tankers coming to the Fields Point area of Providence would be significantly smaller than those that deliver to Boston.

Capt. Mary Landry, the commanding officer of the Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Office in Providence, said the Coast Guard already has protocols in place for handling ships with dangerous cargo as the enter the Port of Providence.

While part of the protocol for dealing with the arrival of an LNG ship could include halting traffic on the Pell Bridge, Landry said that may not be necessary.