This photograph of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker was taken 30 minutes ago from Ta’ Giorni
Published:
March 26, 2014 at 10:20am
Imagine having one of those tied up in the bay permanently at Marsaxlokk.
38 Comments Comment
Reply to C Falzon Click here to cancel reply
Massive. (Quite literally this time!)
Have to wonder whether Graffitti (sic) will be protesting when one of them enters Marsaxlokk.
They always used to “organise” a demonstration of around 3 or 4 persons when any foreign warship carrying “dangerous” weapons entered port.
LMAO!! Dangerous weapons? The funniest comment I’ve seen so far is the one on TOM where some loony said that Al Qaeda would explode the LNG Tanker as a terrorist attack.
Get off the weed son.
The question to be asked is if this tanker is supposed to be anywhere near our coastline, if its danger zone radius as defined by the Seveso Directive, requires it to be farther away from habitable buildings.
Call Asstrid.
I can confirm it is the LNG CAPRICORN – here are its whereabouts – http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/7390208/vessel:LNG_CAPRICORN
If the LNG CAPRICORN is so massive, I wonder what the LNG LEO and LNG TAURUS are like, then.
Is it a co-incidence or a deliberate irony that these tankers are given names from the Zodiac?
If there is, god forbid, an accident involving one of them, all Malta will be seeing millions of stars, and they will not be the pretty “tinkle tinkle litte star; how I wonder what you are” variety. There will not be much time to wonder.
Even at what looks like 2 km from the shore it looks hideous.
We have another one berthed outside Mellieha Bay.
Lucky you!
When the LNG tanker arrives in Marsaxlokk, the Major of Marsaxlokk should be the first one go on board and welcome it and thank them for coming to stay in Marsaxlokk.
L-aqwa li vvutawlu!
The people of Marsaxlokk/Birzebbuga will get what they deserve. They even attended the MEPA discussion session to defend the presence of the LNG tanker and to harass/boo anyone who spoke for their safety.
They are that stupid.
Nakita was there, director at Enemalta hux.
L-iblah taqlaghlu ghajnu, jifrah.
Jien nisthajjilom kurnuti kuntenti.
Qabduhhieli fuq tal-linja li t-tanker huwa safe. Ghidtilom li naqbel: “Mela tajjeb . Jien inhallikom tgawduh, filwaqt li nara li ma nikkuppax li nahli d-dawl ghax se jorhosli b’25%”
“X’jista’ jigri?” komplejt jien “nisma’ bumm, nitla’ fuq il-bejt halli nara x’gara xi ghaxar mili ‘l-isfel , u nerga nidhol norqod.”
Nghidilkom jien, li hawwadtilom il-wajers ta’ mohhom ghax fxiltom. Riedu kwazi jghiduli li jien egoist ghax m’hinix fil-periklu bhalom, imma ma setghux ghax fil-periklu Jo qalilom li m’humiex . Insomma gibtom jitkellmu wahedom.
Nghidilkom is-sewwa, thassartom! Imma m’hemmx x’taghmel.
And another one alongside once a month, thirty six hours to transfer the gas in liquid state.
Imagine rough weather with the two tankers getting the full force of the swell down their side. A vessel having its length over five times its beam means the resultant force is multiplied five times.
Initially and at the end of operations one is full the other empty, fancy the dissonant behaviour of both ships in a minor swell. That means operations would have to be suspended, leaving the harbour blocked.
Mooring the tanker ourtside the bay provides for the capability to turn it into the waves, something which can’t be done in the bay. And we wouldn’t have to consider all these constraints as inevitable. Muscat thinks he’s saving money, but is he wrong.
The captain of the Gemini requested at least a breakwater to attenuate the risks, Muscat’s mental risk assessment won’t.
Imagine the tanker connected to the rigid pipework running down the jetty, standard industry configuration in calm port water. Calibrated to disconnect should sensors read anything amiss.
Just watch the crewman run.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUaed0-uMyg
Another video showing how high an empty tanker sits, notice the extent of infrastructure required to cater for the difference in draft.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHMCe-Bl4nk
And that David Galea from Enemalta is lying, Livorno’s isn’t the only technology, Rovigo is larger and Ancona’s doing the same.
With respect to your first video, if you know anything about what you are looking at you will realize they are called Powered Emergency Release Coupling.
This allows the LNG unloading arms to be decoupled in the event of an emergency and ball valves will prevent the release of LNG, which is clearly shown.
Really? Silly me thought it was video showing an accident where sensors somehow mistook movement releasing the booms.
Guess what happens when it’s decided to have one of those on a ship moored at Marsaxlokk bay without some form of swell protection.
Could be why captain asked for a breakwater.
All things being equal, Muscat runs the risk of actually choosing the option which may take longer, ergo costlier, to engineer.
There can be no movement, call it settlement, anywhere, ever, along the jetty.
Whereas if the regasifier is put onto a properly refurbished tanker there’s no need for that structure.
There’s a plausible case for packaging the regasifier and the tanker in that being a temporary solution, or so he says, it will result much easier to hand over, being a complete package which the prospective client will most probably be looking for.
Not so a forty eight year old vessel which after eight years in port could very well req
Then there’s the notion that engineering systems tend to fail as in this case.
The Boeing 777 is claimed to be safest plane ever. That’s because it isn’t yet a statistic.
Having the pipeline carrying gas is much easier than managing the cryogenics, whatever the length.
And if they plan to connect, the same leg can be connected out at sea.
Compare that with a redundant structure with all that pipework on top jutting out to the middle of the bay, a regasifier on land practically scrap and most probably the Gemini.
And don’t forget that emergency services as well as inspection and maintenance equipment requires a second jetty running alongside and separated from the first.
Then there’s all the foam and suppression systems on land and some very stringent control systems and protocols. Land expropriation to ensure an exclusion zone, you’ll find we’re talking a minimum 1000m radius if things have to follow Industry directives.
If it’s gas coming through an underwater pipeline you’ve removed most of the risks of volumetric build up, which is where the risk is, vast amounts of gas in liquid state.
In other words you’ve transferred all the design headaches out to sea.
Malta is, also considered an earthquake prone area, and that’s a whole new ball game.
Finally, and maybe this one’s still an unknown, what happens if the incident happens, how on Earth are we supposed to fight the fire? Pumping water simply intensifies the fire remember, dedicated port management specialised surface craft required perhaps.
Starts to add up doesn’t it?
All I can hear at the moment is archeological remains and whether fireworks can be let off in the vicinity.
Is that the same LNG tanker that will eventually be anchored at Marsaxlokk, or was it simply passing by?
In any case, this has got to be Labour’s most irresponsible decision so far.
It’s becoming harder and harder for Muscat to hide his totalitarian tendencies. Even their own expert conceded that the tanker would only be safe in an ignition-free zone.
To achieve, you’d have to shut down the entire port – which they won’t for obvious economic reasons; and I really have to wonder why the media didn’t pick up on this glaring assumption in the report.
The Delimara power station alone is a constant source of ignition.
Ann Fenech’s speech at the rally last Sunday was brilliant and a real eye opener. Muscat, it seems, would rather meet the deadline he imposed upon himself instead of ensuring the safety of the residents.
Yes, I can’t imagine how the consultant missed a power station as ignition source, or maybe they told him it’s a water mill.
There are some important things which are not mentioned in the risk assesment.
One perhaps counter intuitive one is that the absence of an ignition source can actually cause a much greater disaster. A nearby ignition source will result in an intense fire in the vicinity whereas the absence of one may allow a cloud of combustible concentration to spread over a much larger area and eventually ignite explosively affecting a very large area.
Another thing is that they only consider so called ‘jets’ meaning fuel gushing out of a hole or a broken pipe. That places a limit of the rate of supply of fuel to a fire and consequently how big that fire can be and/or how far the gas can spread before becoming too rarefied to burn.
They however completely ignore scenarios involving rupture of a tank or even structural failure of the ship’s hull. Both of these can easily result from impact from another ship as well as the tanker breaking its moorings in heavy weather.
More importantly, the second scenario can even be initiated by a small leak in one of the tanks. The extremely cold liquid leaking into the space below the tanks can make the steel as brittle as glass while at the same time subjecting it to a huge temperature differential, being 180 below on the inner side and some 15 degrees on the outside. It is like pouring freezing water into a glass casserole coming straight out of the oven, only much worse.
Why do you say ‘permanently’?
Our prime minister – you know, Jo – told us that it will be berthed there 24/7 for a ‘short’ period of EIGHT long years until the LNG pipeline from Sicily (somehow expected to be procured through EU funds) is up and running.
Needless to say no mishaps will ever occur during that period. Consequently any ‘scaremongering’ by so many in their right senses is null and void.
As somebody recently commented on another website: “And ‘pop’ goes the weasel” – meaning, presumably, that nothing should stir our tranquility or preoccupy us with our normal life not continuing peacefully ‘as usual’, since things will somehow always look after themselves without anybody ever coming to harm.
We do, really, have some utter sods among us who are looking – or somehow have been persuaded to look – at things that way.
The mother of all videos regarding LNG.
at 20.00;
‘Mathematical models exist for analysing the behaviour of spills and fires, but no model exists for the combination of a release of a cryogenic liquid through two ship hulls, its spread on a water surface, its vaporisation, travel of the vapor and the likelihood of ignition.
If not ignited as a result of initial breaching of the hulls, approximations using existing models suggest that propagation could release vapors in the flammable range more than two miles’.
That’s two miles. And these jerks won’t even admit the need for a risk assessment BEFORE proceeding with the design of a system cobbled together using a second hand ship never designed for that purpose, refusing to consider a breakwater and no sign of any consulting engineer willing to sign off this farce. They’ll blame the EU consultant when it happens.
The importance of having a risk assessment first then the design couldn’t be better outlined at 18.00.
So, do we want to discover whether the propagation rate across Marsaxlokk bay results in a vapour cloud below the flammable limit by physical demonstration?
Given the way any risk scenario is being treated it seems that’s where we want to go.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnoU_k8CIUQ
I wonder if someone will come out with the suggestion that it is the Simon Busuttil who rented this ship and brought it to our shores in a scare-mongering exercise.
Where is Audrey Harrison now ??
Who’s that?
Our local arthouse passionate love scene temptress.
Oh she is the one who was harping on how Labour would clean the air and how it was the PN’s fault because of the power station in Birzebbugia (apparently she lives there) but in actual fact she was trying to get a nice iced bun for her hubby, hoping her husband will be the next police commissioner, imma she failed, although if I am not mistaken she was given something herself.
Now that the MEPA has overwhelmingly voted for an LNG tanker in Marsaxlokk Bay despite there being no maritime impact assessment studies and with total disregard of the Seveso Directive, the government is probably preparing to have another one installed in St. Julian’s Bay. Come the 2018 elections, they could then promise another “inrahhsu l-kontijiet b’25%.”
By the way, has anyone noticed that recently we have been getting more power cuts (at least in the Sliema area.) I wonder if this is a ‘kunnink plen’ to make sure ‘Sliemizi’ receive lower electricity bills. :-)
Photographers, roll up and take the last photos of the ‘picturesque fishermen’s village’.
Holy mother of mercy !
That is one big firecracker waiting to go off on that ship.
Ah well, the good news is that the LNG Capricorn will continue with its voyage in the seas North of Malta.
The bad news is that its sister the LNG Gemini will soon enter Marsaxlokk Bay never to leave again.
Good luck to the Laburisti of Marsaxlokk – and everyone else with them.
After all, this is Trasparenza. Can’t miss it.