There is a high-pressure gas pipeline material that has been tested and proven to be able to resist the worst set of seismic conditions. The technology is constantly improving.

The codes and standards that apply to highly pressurized gas pipelines in Japan are required to demonstrate resistance to buckling and rupture in the presence of fault movement, permanent ground displacement and liquefaction. We certainly can employ the same codes and standards so we do not have to go out and reinvent the wheel.

The issue of a massive fireball covering Santa Barbara to Simi Valley or a tsunami ripping the LNG tanker terminal from the seabed is hysteria and not science. 

First and foremost, let’s deal with the tsunami scenario. The sea during a tsunami event is not dominated by a gigantic wave of immense power. Most ships that are offshore during a tsunami event do not even feel the wave. The tsunami event becomes catastrophic when it surges into the shallow water at the coastline. The energy of the North Sea pounding the oil rigs in that environment is substantially more of a pounding than any tsunami could produce. Those oil rigs go through the battering of the North Sea every season, year in and year out.

The gas-cloud fire theory is plain bad science. To make the scenario a reality would require that the natural gas cloud spread, unignited, over all of that land area. To make natural gas burn, we all know, there must be an ignition source.

If, as attorney Tim Riley’s scenario is stated, a plane crashes into a tanker or the offshore terminal/regasification facility, there would be a localized fire and/or a possible explosion because the crash would be a source of ignition. There would be no known scenario that would support the theory that an unignited gas cloud would spread over tens of miles without finding an ignition source.

There is technology in use today to detect even tiny leaks in a pressurized natural gas pipeline. Anyone who has had a propane barbecue grill tank refilled knows the propane used to refill the tank is very cold. The same is true for high- pressure natural gas in a pipeline. A leak in a high- pressure natural gas pipeline results in significant cooling.  There are fiberoptic temperature sensors that are used on natural gas pipelines to sense a drop in temperature and immediately shut down that leaking section of pipe.

What Ventura County needs are technically and scientifically based myth busters to calmly and coolly address the concerns of the community. If there are attendant risks, they should be identified and appropriate corrective action taken to mitigate the risks.

— David Collins, Newbury Park