Track 6 of 7
Safety, regulation and environment
How LNG behaves when it escapes, the codes and bodies that govern ships and terminals, and the honest version of the emissions argument including methane slip and upstream leakage.
LNG does not burn as a liquid and does not explode in the open the way a vapour cloud of a heavier hydrocarbon can. What it does is spill, spread, boil, and form a cold vapour cloud that is briefly heavier than air and flammable within a range of concentrations. Understanding that sequence is what terminal siting, exclusion zones and emergency shutdown design are all built around.
The regulatory picture is unusual in that a single international code governs the ships, and an industry body’s guidance is treated as the practical standard alongside it. Terminals, by contrast, are regulated nationally and vary enormously.
The environmental question is genuinely contested and the honest answer is uncomfortable: the combustion arithmetic favours gas over coal, and the upstream methane arithmetic can erase that advantage entirely depending on leakage rates that are poorly measured. This track sets out both sides with the numbers.
7 modules
1 written so far; the rest are listed in the order they will be published.
- 01Why LNG behaves the way it does in an incidentplanned
- 02Rapid phase transition, pool fires and vapour dispersionplanned
- 03The IGC Code and what SIGTTO doesplanned
- 04Terminal siting and exclusion zonesplanned
- 05Methane slip and the emissions argumentplanned
- 06Lifecycle emissions: the honest versionplanned
- 07LNG and maritime chokepoints
A maritime chokepoint is a narrow strait or canal that a large share of seaborne trade must pass through, and LNG exposure to them depends entirely on which exporting region supplies which importing market.
Vocabulary for this track
9 terms, defined in full in the glossary.