Eliphaz wrote:Mystic station units 8&9 in Boston are entirely fired by LNG, 1400 MW !
There is a lot of LNG in the world. Certainly, it's a market place with it's own complexities, but the pipelines in the northeast are knotty and jittery.
Building a 22 mile connector sounds like a way to get LNG into the market as well as an alternative supply option for the plant.
A plant capable of pulling from either could well become very valuable - The reliability issue is far more significant than energy price.
The Mystic station is a unique situation and not comparable to the B. L. England station in question. Mystic is immediately adjacent to the large DOMAC LNG terminal that receives foreign LNG tankers. (By the tanker load and no need for domestic transportation in liquid or gaseous form the economics are substantially different.) The LNG is then vaporized by DOMAC and supplied to Mystic as well as to interstate pipelines and the local distribution company. DOMAC also markets LNG by the truckload to various local distribution companies ("LDC") in New England for peak shaving on the coldest days of the winter. LDCs use LNG directly only to shave peaks as the last source to be used because it is most expensive. The closest LNG terminal to B. L. England is at Cove Point, Maryland and injects vaporized gas into the interstate pipeline system similar to DOMAC. The next closest LNG terminal (other than DOMAC) is Elba Island, Georgia and the rest are on the Gulf of Mexico, and one in Alaska. A lot of LNG is exported or under regulatory review for export from the US due to low cost fracing gas now available. There is some legitimate concern that within a few years exports of LNG and shifting of an estimated 20% of coal fired generation to gas will result in market forces pushing up the price from the extraordinary low levels of today.
Reliability of natural gas supply is not a matter of source, but rather of the firmness of the transportation contracts. Most generating stations use interruptible pipeline transportation service meaning on the very cold days (or when wells are shut in due to hurricanes), they don't get gas that instead goes to customers with firm transportation contracts, most of which in turn the LDC supplies for home and business heating load and other essential uses. Interruptible transportation and less firm storage are substantially less expensive than firm service which is why generators use it. The electric power industry ensures reliability of supply by maintaining a calculated amount of operating reserves when extreme weather is forecast in anticipation of less gas available for generation. The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("FERC") very recently scheduled a series of technical conferences to discuss gas-electric coordination with industry stakeholders because of the growing dependence on natural gas for generation fuel. B. L. England will build (or interstate pipeline or LDC will build) the 22 mile pipeline to an interstate trunkline with sufficient capacity to serve the station. If LNG is purchased by B. L. England it will be served by displacement, i.e., the LNG injections into the interstate system are co-mingled with domestic supply. Note that New Jersey and the surrounding states are summer peaking for electric when pipeline capacity is never an issue. There is a winter peak on the coldest days for electric but it is much lower than the summer peak, generation and distribution is more efficient in cold weather, so less generation is needed when gas transportation is scarce.
Not only Conrail's Beasley's Point Secondary, but overall in the railroad industry a significant drop in coal transportation is expected to occur.
