Safety of Yemeni LNG Cargoes Questioned in Boston

In late February, a first shipment of LNG from Yemen is slated to arrive at Distrigas’s LNG facility in Everett, Massachusetts—prompting much discussion of whether a cargo from that nation represents too great a risk to the thousands of citizens living within a mile of Boston Harbor.

Yemen is widely regarded as a nation whose efforts to combat terrorism have been inadequate. In 2000 it was the site of the bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole, and a group linked to Al Qaeda in Yemen last month took responsibility for the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

In addition, counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke, a native Bostonian, has asserted that Al Qaeda operatives slipped through Boston aboard LNG tankers in the 1990s.

The president of Distrigas has said that the French-owned facility in Yemen is monitored by European security personnel and that the E.U.’s Naval Force will work with the Yemeni Coast Guard and Navy to ensure that tankers are loaded safely. However, the waters between Yemen and neighboring Somalia are known to be full of pirates, causing some to question the efficacy of these forces.

The facility in Everett supplies about 40 percent of New England’s gas in winter—and without the scheduled Yemeni cargoes, supply in the region could become tight. On the other hand, studies by universities and the FERC have suggested that an LNG tanker explosion could burn victims nearly a mile away.

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