Word: lng
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...buoyant as a bobbing cork, the El Paso Sonatrach will cruise into Chesapeake Bay next week on a historic voyage. The $100 million tanker will tie up at Cove Point, Md., a once bucolic spot on the western shore of the bay. There, it will discharge liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Arzew, Algeria, into the nation's first superport designed specifically to receive LNG...
That will merely be the start. Until now, LNG has arrived in the U.S. only in the form of small shipments made to Boston's Distrigas Corp. to supplement supplies during New England's chilly winters. But from next week on, one of a fleet of nine El Paso tankers will deposit LNG at Cove Point roughly every 60 hours. There, the supercold liquid, which arrives at a temperature of 259° F. below zero, will be heated until it turns back into gas, then piped through the networks of Columbia Gas System and Pittsburgh-based Consolidated Natural...
Much more may follow. To gas distributors, the logic of importing LNG seems irrefutable. Natural gas is a clean-burning fuel that is relatively scarce in the U.S.; in many foreign countries it gushes out of oilfields in great volume, but is burned off because there is no local market for it. Granted, it cannot be piped across the oceans, but why not liquefy it to one six-hundredth of its normal volume and haul it to the U.S. aboard ship...
...instead of simply flaring it off. To get the job done, the Saudis signed a $7.5 billion contract with the Arabian American Oil Co. (Aramco), which eventually intends to export gas to the U.S. Iran is sinking $6 billion into liquefaction plants and a fleet of 35 LNG carriers to ship gas to its American and European markets beginning...
...however, the cost and difficulties of shipping LNG long distances will, for the foreseeable future at least, keep gas imports from becoming the major energy prop that oil imports now are. At a time when the Government is striving to lessen dependence on foreign energy, that could be at least an ironically mixed blessing...