What if Broadwater is Approved and There's Little Demand for LNG?

Geoffrey Styles of the Energy Outlook blog read the Sunday Times Broadwater story (in the Connecticut and Long Island sections) and came up with an interesting analysis of the recently-released Synapse report on Broadwater’s LNG proposal and its implications for not just the anti-Broadwater effort but the region’s energy needs. Read it here.

Geoff says the best outcome might be for Synapse to be right about the lack of demand for LNG in the region and for Broadwater to be approved:

Paradoxically, if Broadwater were built and turned out to be as unnecessary as its opponents now argue, it could be very beneficial for the region, while its a impact on Long Island Sound would be much less than feared. Residents and businesses would benefit from Broadwater's ability to deflate price spikes with a few well-timed cargoes, but its overall under-utilization would minimize its effect on the environment and shipping in the Sound. That might not be very good for Broadwater's parent companies, but that's their risk to worry about. The bottom line is that opponents can't have it both ways: either the terminal will be fully employed and bring dozens of LNG cargoes a year into the Sound--with whatever environmental consequences that entails--or it will be mostly idle, and thus have little impact beyond the visual.