After reading the article in the Harvard Press—“Exploring the risks of Natural gas in Harvard” Oct 8, 2010, by John Osborn—I felt the need to offer up anther opinion on the subject. Although I applaud the Press for bringing this issue to light, I do feel that there was much left out.
I will be up front in letting readers know that I do own a small business that sells fuel oil and heating service, and admit I probably can be a little prejudiced in defending this industry.
However, home heating oil offers customers a safe, relatively inexpensive source of comfort, and now offers an environment-ally friendly Biofuel blend to go along with personal service by highly trained professionals. Besides similar efficiency ratings between the two fuels I ask, where are the financial advantages or carbon-saving advantages to using gas if you have to use more of it to get the same results as burning one gallon of oil, which has a higher BTU rating than a therm of natural gas?
What concerned me the most after the San Bruno California natural gas explosion was that National Grid spokesman David Graves explained it away by stating “every energy source has a certain level of risk.” This should be appalling to anyone who buys and uses energy in this country. How would you feel if one of the eight victims whose lives were cut short was your brother or sister, mother or father, or worse, your child? What Mr. Graves did not say is New England, Massachusetts in particular, has the oldest natural gas underground pipelines in the country outside of New York City. I wonder why National Grid is not anxious to provide maps of where their pipelines run or why the Department of Transportation removed their National Pipeline mapping website. This is the height of public utility and government arrogance.
In contrast, what I hear from the natural and propane gas utilities are words like, “explosions,” “leveled properties,” “blasts,” “Richter earthquake scale,” “serious burns and injuries,” “homes destroyed,” “gas leaks,” “catastrophic failure,” “accidents,” and “risks.”
I’ll let the readers make up their own minds which is the safer fuel.
Scott Kimball
Ayer Road
