PLANT TOUTS SAFETY AMID $400M EXPANSION
Tilbury Island LNG facility to ramp up production by summer
The risks at the FortisBC liquefiednatural gas facility at Tilbury Island in Delta are so real that visitors are ordered not to take photos or even turn on their cellphones during a tour as a way to minimize the chance of electrical sparks creating an ignition source.
Yet Doug Stout, the company’s vice-president of market development, insists that the plant’s excellent safety record to date will continue into the future during an ongoing $400-million expansion that will increase production capacity sevenfold.
“These facilities are safe operations,” Stout said in an interview. “We’ve operated here since 1971 without an incident. It’s a wellbuilt and well-run operation.”
Expansion of the Tilbury facility would have LNG ships travelling alongside residential communities such as Steveston in Richmond.
“It’s a bad location for an LNG terminal and puts the public at risk,” said Kevin Washbrook of Voters Taking Action on Climate Change.
“I don’t think this project would be allowed in the U.S.”
Stout noted in response that other LNG plants in North America have operated safely in populated areas including in Boston and Cove Point, Md. — and with larger ships than would be allowed on the lower Fraser River. Oil refineries are also located in populated areas, including the Chevron Canada refinery in Burrard Inlet in Burnaby.
In an LNG accident in March 2014, six workers were injured in an explosion at the Williams Northwest Pipeline facility in Plymouth, Wash. At the time, police said it was a miracle no one died, with 100 kilogram-plus pieces of steel tossed close to 100 metres through the air. Pipeline safety regulators concluded that the leading cause was inadequate procedures that allowed oxygen to remain in the system. The mix of the oxygen and gas ignited.
“Things happen, but it was contained,” Stout said. “It was one of those industrial-type accidents that we don’t want to have happen, but unfortunately sometimes they do.”
A second FortisBC LNG facility opened in 2011 at Mount Hayes near Ladysmith on Vancouver Island. And there is potential for much greater expansion at the 14-hectare Tilbury site in the coming years as LNG is increasingly used in the trucking and shipping sectors, as well as a cleaner alternative to small and remote communities currently using diesel fuel to generate electricity.
The current list of LNG customers includes Whitehorse, a JDS sil- ver mine in northern B.C., and the community of Anahim Lake in the Chilcotin.
“In the realm of carbon-based fuels, it’s the cleanest one out there,” said Mike Orth, a plant manager at the Tilbury site.
FortisBC has been quietly shipping LNG south by tanker truck on a regular basis for the past year, to customers such as Puget Sound Energy and Clean Energy Fuels in Washington state.
Although plans to sell LNG to Hawaii collapsed last year, FortisBC is confident about the future.
Two Seaspan freight ferries operating from Metro Vancouver to Vancouver Island already use LNG from the Tilbury plant, with diesel as backup. Specially designed tanker trucks pull onto the ferries to transfer the product. Three new hybrid B.C. Ferries Salish-class vessels will also use LNG, evidence of a growing trend in the marine sector, including ocean-going ships being forced to reduce emissions by the International Maritime Organization.
“We see big future opportunities,” Stout said. “The market for fuel worldwide in the maritime side is huge.”
At the Tilbury facility, natural gas is bought at low prices in summer, cooled and stored as LNG, to be converted back to natural gas for use in winter when costs are higher.
“It’s like a shot of adrenalin,” Orth said. “We push it right into the transmission system, through Richmond, Vancouver, Burnaby, et cetera.”
Liquefying natural gas reduces the volume by about 600 times. LNG is not pressurized at Tilbury Island and is stored in large Thermos-like containers.
FortisBC started construction of its Tilbury expansion in October 2014, with the facility expected to be operating this summer. The project was reviewed by the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission, but was not the subject of a provincial or federal environmental assessment.
The current facility can liquefy 5,000 gigajoules (GJ) of gas per day, and has a storage capacity of 600,000 GJ. The expanded facility will be able to liquefy an additional 34,000 GJ of natural gas per day and will add 1.1 million GJ of additional storage capacity. The total annual capacity at the expanded facility will liquefy natural gas with enough energy to heat 142,000 homes for a year. Its storage capacity is enough to heat 17,000 homes for a year.
The new facility involves a nickel-steel inner tank, insulating layer, carbon-steel tank and an outer reinforced concrete shell that collectively meet earthquake seismic standards.
Stout said that future staged expansion could increase throughput capacity by another 10 times beyond the current expansion level, making the Tilbury facility 1.5 times bigger than the planned Woodfibre LNG facility near Squamish.
Future expansions would require FortisBC to construct about seven kilometres of new 230 kV power line connecting Tilbury to B.C. Hydro’s Arnott substation in Delta.
California-based WesPac Midstream is expected to submit a formal application to the province’s Environmental Assessment Office this fall for an LNG terminal next to the Fortis site.
Ships visiting the terminal would employ two B.C. pilots and up to three tethered “high-power escort tugs,” the strongest such safety measures to date on the Fraser River and a reflection of concerns over movement of the product.
As revised, the $175-million project anticipates 48 ships up to 90,000 cubic metres, 42 ships up to 65,000 cubic metres and 34 barges up to 7,500 cubic metres.
Currently, large ocean-going ships on the lower Fraser have one B.C. pilot on board and employ one to three tugs during docking only — none for tethered escort along the river. The LNG ships are expected to range up to about 250 metres in length, with the potential for them also to be powered by LNG.
These facilities are safe operations. We’ve operated here since 1971 without an incident. It’s a well-built and well-run operation.
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