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Christopher Dickey du Newsweek Entreprise revient cette semaine sur les enseignements a tiré de l'accident du complexe de skikda
the lesson of Skikda
Voici quelques extraits :
The scene was the Algerian port of Skikda, where processing plants take natural gas pumped from the Sahara and cool it under enormous pressure to 162 degrees below zero Celsius. At that temperature the gas turns into a liquid that can be shipped all over the world in a new breed of refrigerated supertankers. When it arrives at its destination, liquefied natural gas, commonly called LNG, is then warmed very carefully until it becomes, again, the clean-burning stuff with the fine blue flame that sizzles hamburgers in countless kitchens, warms offices and bedrooms, and generates an increasingly large share of the electricity in the United States.
But at 6:40 p.m. on Jan. 19, according to a subsequent report on the Skikda incident by the Algerian state energy company, Sonatrach, "a first explosion was heard, followed immediately by a second more massive explosion and a huge fireball." The va—por cloud, said the report, "was unfortunately at the right explosion ratio." Flames quickly engulfed Train 40, and 30 and 20. When the fire was contained eight hours later, 27 people were dead and 56 wounded. The political and financial shock waves reached the United States, stalling or stopping plans to build receiving terminals in California, Maine and Alabama. Never mind that new plants bear little resemblance to the Algerian plants, which date to the 1970s. "People have the fear of LNG that it's going to go boom," says another oil-company executive. "If people believe it's an issue, then it's an issue."
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5963505/site/newsweek/
the lesson of Skikda
Voici quelques extraits :
The scene was the Algerian port of Skikda, where processing plants take natural gas pumped from the Sahara and cool it under enormous pressure to 162 degrees below zero Celsius. At that temperature the gas turns into a liquid that can be shipped all over the world in a new breed of refrigerated supertankers. When it arrives at its destination, liquefied natural gas, commonly called LNG, is then warmed very carefully until it becomes, again, the clean-burning stuff with the fine blue flame that sizzles hamburgers in countless kitchens, warms offices and bedrooms, and generates an increasingly large share of the electricity in the United States.
But at 6:40 p.m. on Jan. 19, according to a subsequent report on the Skikda incident by the Algerian state energy company, Sonatrach, "a first explosion was heard, followed immediately by a second more massive explosion and a huge fireball." The va—por cloud, said the report, "was unfortunately at the right explosion ratio." Flames quickly engulfed Train 40, and 30 and 20. When the fire was contained eight hours later, 27 people were dead and 56 wounded. The political and financial shock waves reached the United States, stalling or stopping plans to build receiving terminals in California, Maine and Alabama. Never mind that new plants bear little resemblance to the Algerian plants, which date to the 1970s. "People have the fear of LNG that it's going to go boom," says another oil-company executive. "If people believe it's an issue, then it's an issue."
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5963505/site/newsweek/
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