Texas Gas Explosion (Any Engineers out there ?)

08/19/04 | vanity

[genefromjersey]

A story has already been posted about an explosion in a natural gas storage area,in Moss Bluff,Liberty County,Tx-about 40 miles NE of Houston.

Blast seems to have happened about 4:15AM today,and is still burning (remainder of gas in the particular storage "cell").

Since an al-Qaeda operative nicknamed "Jafar the Pilot",who was trained in explosives-some of the training involving natural gas-MIGHT be passing through Texas about this time,my interest is piqued.

How about it ? Any engineers out there familiar with the type of storage,frequency of mishaps, etc ? Is this more likely to have been an accident ?

Your comments (apart from the Beano-related) welcome.

[SpaceBar]

An experienced field technician in the area of natural gas storage and distribution will tell you more about it than an engineer.

[Fzob]

Engineer in the Chemical industry checking in.

Natural gas fires/explosions of various sizes are not exactly an every day occurrence, but they are certainly not rare.

Is it terrorism? Unlikely, but you never know for sure.

[Dog Gone]

There were several caverns in the salt dome. Unlikely that a terrorist would only target one. At most, $33 million dollars of gas was destroyed.

This has every sign of being an unfortunate accident.

[Dog Gone]

The LNG terminals are probably less problematical than our existing oil refineries. In fact, a couple are planned as completely offshore facilities where LNG tankers hook up to existing offshore lines which will carry the gas into out the distribution system.

These kind of things happen. We had a somewhat similar but more deadly explosion about a decade ago at a site near Brenham, Texas. It literally rocked office buildings in Houston which is about 40 miles away, perhaps further.

It wasn't terrorism, of course, but nobody even worried in those days whether it could have been.

[CyberAnt]

I would be more concerned about the theft of gasoline or some other explosive liquid.

We have a missing tanker truck, as well as an airplane with built in liquid storage tanks. Either of these storage sources could yield a terrible explosion along with thousands of deaths.

[peteram]

I saw real-time footage of it this morning (I work at a TV station) and, while spectacular in it's nature, it appeared to be quite contained. It was as if someone lit the end of a pipe and all one needed to do to extinguish it would be to shut off a valve. I'm sure it would be more involved than that, but none of the nearby structures looked like they were threatened.