Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch has called on the U.S. Coast Guard to withdraw and reconsider its recent letter of recommendation (LOR) providing conditional support for Weaver’s Cove Energy LLC’s proposal to construct a berth for tankers in Mount Hope Bay and underwater pipeline facilities to unload and deliver liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the proposed terminal site at Fall River, MA.

The LOR, which the Coast Guard issued in late July, and the letter of recommendation analysis (LORA) for the Weaver’s Cove project are at odds with Coast Guard policy, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the due process clause of the Constitution, Lynch said He also contends “there was a lack of fundamental fairness toward the citizens of this state, who were essentially deprived of a meaningful opportunity to be heard and to provide information to the [Coast Guard] during the LOR process.”

Lynch is highly critical of the Coast Guard’s July LOR decision, which concluded that portions of the Narragansett Bay and Mount Hope Bay may be considered suitable for the type and frequency of LNG marine traffic associated with Weaver’s Cove’s offshore berth proposal.

“Because the LOR and the LORA have determined that the affected waterway is suitable for repeated transits of LNG, a highly hazardous cargo, the LOR and the LORA clearly constitute ‘major federal action’ by the [Coast Guard] under NEPA. Despite the many obvious significant adverse environmental impacts associated with such shipments of LNG…the [Coast Guard] has never publicly declared its position on whether the issuance of the LOR and LORA will have a ‘significant environmental impact.’

“It is the state of Rhode Island’s position that NEPA requires the [Coast Guard] to undertake an ‘environmental assessment’ with regard to the action it has taken here,” Lynch said.

Weaver’s Cove, a joint venture of Hess Corp. and Poten & Partners, submitted the berth proposal earlier this year in an attempt to suppress some of the controversy surrounding the project. (see Daily GPI, Feb. 5). The offshore berth would eliminate the need for LNG tankers to travel the Taunton River, which Congress declared off-limits by including it in the National Wild and Scenic River system, and would quell the concerns of the public and the Coast Guard about tankers transporting LNG between the old and new Brightman Street Bridges that span the Taunton River between the town of Somerset, MA, and Fall River.

The LNG terminal will represent one of the largest single investments ($700 million) ever made in southeast Massachusetts, and would generate more than 1,000 new jobs during the three-year construction period, Weaver’s Cove said.

The newly proposed facilities include structures to secure the LNG tanker in place during the unloading operations. From the berth, twin underwater pipelines would transfer LNG to the proposed terminal on the bank of the Taunton River at Fall River. The terminal project and pipeline connections to the existing interstate natural gas system were approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in June 2005 (see Daily GPI, July 1, 2005).

The Weaver’s Cove project originally called for tankers to use the Taunton River to deliver LNG to the Fall River terminal. But the Coast Guard in late 2007 concluded that the Taunton River was “unsuitable from a navigation safety perspective for the type, size and frequency of LNG marine traffic associated with [the Weaver’s Cove] proposal” (see Daily GPI, Oct. 25, 2007).

The Weaver’s Cove project has been the target of fierce opposition by local, state and federal officials, who are adamantly against building LNG infrastructure in their backyard, although they admit that more natural gas supply is needed for the region (see Daily GPI, Sept. 11, 2006). If built, the proposed terminal would provide 800 MMcf/d of peak sendout capacity, 400 MMcf/d of baseload supply and 200,000 metric tons of LNG storage.

The LNG terminal would increase the supply of natural gas to the New England region by 15% on average and 30% during peak demand periods, according to Weaver’s Cove.

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