Energy companies TransCanada and Shell US Gas and Power proposed earlier this year a joint venture to build a large Liquefied Natural Gas Floating Storage and Regasification unit in Long Island Sound called Broadwater.

The proposed unit will be located in New York waters, nine miles from its coast and eleven miles from the Connecticut Shoreline. The proposed unit will be approximately 180 feet wide, and 75 to 100 feet above the water line, about the size of the ocean cruise liner Queen Mary II. Storage capacity of the proposed unit would be approximately 350,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas and 8 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

Natural gas is liquefied by cooling it to –260F degrees. In that form, natural gas shrinks to 600 times its original volume, making it less expensive to ship and transport throughout the world. Facilities like the proposed Broadwater unit receive liquefied gas from large ocean carriers, store it, and eventually heat the liquid until it returns to a gas (regasification).

Broadwater proposes to connect the LNG facility to the existing Iroquois natural gas pipeline that runs in the seabed from Milford, CT to Northport, NY. Natural gas stored and altered at Broadwater would then be available to New York and Connecticut for a variety of energy uses.

The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will serve as the lead agency to conduct an analysis of the Broadwater project, and will ultimately approve, reject or revise the permit. In addition, the US Coast Guard, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service must approve various pieces of the proposal. Because the facility, if approved, will float in New York, various New York state agencies must also approve various parts of the plan.

If all permits and regulations are approved, Broadwater plans to begin construction in early 2008, with actual shipments beginning in 2010.

Because the Broadwater project raises a number of safety, security, and environmental concerns for the State of Connecticut, Governor Rell created the Long Island Sound Liquefied Natural Gas Task Force to monitor and participate in the permit process.