6 posts were split to a new topic: U.S. Flagged Ship - Some crew lacks credentials
Another nose in the tent ā¦
Colin must be thrilled.
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Since there are no American LNG ships, I favor waiving the US build requirement for 10 years and allowing LNG ships to be bought and reflagged US with Jones Act privileges.
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I would too IF that were part of the dealā¦ Itās not.
Why? What Jones Act LNG would we need?
The US imported 21.6 billion cubic feet of LNG in 2021 almost exclusively from Trinidad and Tobago.
Liquefied natural gas - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
So yeah, that gas couldāve come from the GOM. Of course having a US flagged LNG ship with no accompanying laws to support it would render it useless.
Personally I think this is a hard sell as LNG carriers arenāt militarily useful. Thatās the caveat that keeps the deep sea US flag alive via MSP/TSP.
But we exported 3,561 bcf, nearly 11 bcf/d. So thatās 2 days of exports going up to Boston? I donāt know if that makes a lot of sense.
Apparently, Puerto Rico needs LNG. And apparently, they cannot get it from Trinidad.
Not sure about right now, but for decades Boston got its foreign LNG by ship. I think it still does. The environmentalists will not allow enough pipelines to be built from the Marcellus Shale gas fields to New England.
It might be nice to be able to ship LNG from Texas to Boston.
We are in a Cold War with Russia and China. Russia is squeezing our Allies by cutting off gas supplies. I think it would be very useful for the US to have a fleet of LNG ships. And they should have loading preferences at US LNG terminals.
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21 billion cubic feet of LNG in two days? Thatās an aggressive plan you have there.
I think a relevant way to look at this is how many cargos does Boston import? From Wikipedia and a cursory internet search, a modern large LNG carrier has a capacity of 6-8 million cubic feet. 21 billion divided by 6-8 million is 2600-3500 cargos per year. That seems like an ample amount of work IF laws and incentives are such to make it happen.
Last year they imported 10 cargoes: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-06/LNG%20Monthly%20December%202021.pdf
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This was my point without doing the math. Itās not that much gas.
A modern ship holds somewhere between 180-200k m3 of LNG. The conversion from gas to vapor is x600. So a ship carrying 185,000m3 of cargo gets you 111,000,000 m3 of gas.
New England would use a lot more gas (it would replace oil) if it could get the gas delivered at reasonable cost. For a long time Boston was tied into a long term contact for high cost Algerian gas. I believe thatās over.
There are two pipelines from Mass to Nova Scotia that formerly brought Sable Island gas to Haverhill. I believe that the declining production of Sable Island gas is now kept in Canada, and the pipelines has been reversed with gas flowing from the US to Canada.
Trucks also bring gas from Pennsylvania to Haverhill, and trucks load gas at Haverhill and deliver it to Northern New England industries.
A few years ago there was a proposal to deliver propane by ship from the US Gulf to Searsport, Maine, that had a lot of opposition from NIMBYs and it became uneconomic when the price of oil and gas fell.
slight change in direction. IMO there is a better than good chance we will have some export limits on clean products - would guess close to the election. Should drive need to move bbls USG - USAC north of Hatteras, that will bring a call for JA waivers - and they will get them.
I think Iād was a huge mistake to lift the export ban on crude oil. It should be brought back.
If crude oil, and LNG, and products are to be exported, at least 1/3rd of those exports should reserved to US flag ships.
I favor an export duty of about 10% on most exports of oil, LNG or their products.
I favor import duty of 10% or more on foreign oil and products.
The oil and gas industry in the US needs to be regulated like a public utility. There should be a minimum and maximum price for oil, gas, and refined products. The bust and boom cycle must be modulated. Windfall profits and bankruptcies must be averted.
We must encourage and protect stable US oil and gas production, refining, and delivery in order to be energy independent. National security and a healthy , non-inflationary, national economy both require it.
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Australia is also struggling with a lack of a national shipping fleet, both for domestic and foreign trade.
With a very long distances between population centers (mostly at the coast) and a long coastline, it would make good sense to at least re-develop coastal shipping.
The newly elected Labour Government intends to do something about that:
But it is not going to be easy;
You want to, in effect, nationalize the oil and gas industry? Like Norway does?
FYI:
The list of US OCS licenced companies:
Its been a while since I worked on Boston harbor but they used to get a big green Berge LNG carrier every 11 days or so like clockwork up to Everett from Trinidad. Post-9/11/USS Cole having something like that float past downtown was not palatable and the security response was enormous and onerous every time so they rushed the Gateway offshore terminal, which is where I understand the majority of it goes now.
LNG tankers were once built at NNSY and in the now defunct GD Quincy yards, somebody has to have those plans in a dusty file cabinet somewhere.