Natural gas become LNG at minus 260 deg. F.

By Barbara Daniels, Letter to the Editor, Charleston Gazette, January 20, 2018

An (unusual) Tufts University economic analysis of the Mountain Valley Pipeline and Atlantic Coast Pipeline overturns almost everything pipeline companies and government officials are telling us.

Counter to loudly proclaimed manufacturing jobs and cheaper electricity rates, the December 5th report shows that States with recently built pipelines, including West Virginia, often have less employment and an increase in rates.

Demand for electricity is generally dwindling, moreover, and existing pipelines have expanded their capacity far over that of the two proposed pipelines. Meanwhile, the Tufts report states: ”Testimony using Dominion’s own, more recent cost projections concludes that Dominion’s customers may actually pay $1.61 to $2.36 billion more with the ACP than without the ACP over the next 20 years.”

The estimated cost of the ACP and MVP could support enough alternative energy for 400,000 homes. And, according to the National Resource Defense Council, that money could generate three times more clean-energy jobs than could the ACP in the same period.

Why, then, are these pipelines being built, especially in spite of widely-based protest?

The answer may be this: A July 28, 2016, advocate staff report states that the Panama Canal has been widened to accommodate enormous, new liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers. So gas companies can now competitively ship to the much more lucrative Asian markets. The continual planned extension of these pipelines toward coastal LNG export terminals (which are also new), and the propaganda enabling this, are probably not coincidental.

Unsurprisingly following gas industry assumptions that are, at best, incomplete, the U.S. government promotes liquefied natural gas exports.

Greenwire reports that this policy is based on simplistic gas industry claims that LNG exports will displace coal overseas, thus reducing greenhouse emissions. This assumption fails to consider three major factors: 1. the huge emissions during production and delivery that offset any “clean-burning” benefits; 2. the resulting rise in U.S gas prices that would increase coal use here; and 3. Asian countries would likely add, rather than substitute, gas for their growing energy needs.

Frack fluid is used to produce the delivered gas. The chemicals contained in this fluid are so toxic that they are hidden under patents and nondisclosure laws. Further, the fracking process itself is so polluting that it needs exemptions from all seven major federal environmental laws, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Superfund Act and the Clean Air Act.

Nevertheless, once the pipelines reach coastal terminals and gas prices rise with offshore sales, hundreds of unused West Virginia drilling permits will be activated. West Virginia is facing destruction from fracking as never before.

Barbara Daniels, Richwood, WV