several years Godfrey had simply not bothered to pay it. “Income is only a matter of opinion,” he would say to government agents. In return, the Internal Revenue Service had expropriated Godfrey’s bank accounts.
While wrestling with this problem, Thomas had some time on his hands, and he started writing a scientific paper that related to one of his father’s other failed ventures. This concerned cryogenics—the study of very low temperatures, at which various gases turn into liquids. During the First World War, Godfrey Cabot had built a plant in West Virginia to liquefy natural gas and patented a design. “My father had dreamt of liquefying components of natural gas,” Thomas Cabot later said. As a business, however, it had proved to be a total bust.1
Cryogenics was based on the work of Michael Faraday, who in the 1820s had used cold temperatures to turn gases into liquids. In the 1870s the German scientist Carl von Linde had done further work on refrigeration. His research attracted interest from brewing companies, which, along with their customers, decidedly liked the idea of cold beer. Linde was soon supplying the brewers with refrigerators. He later patented processes for liquefying oxygen, nitrogen, and other gases at very low temperatures and making them available on a commercial scale. His work provided the basis for practical applications of cryogenics.
It was back to his father’s dream of liquefying natural gas that Cabot turned, while also fending off the IRS. Cabot specifically wanted to explore how extreme refrigeration could be used during the summer season, when demand was low, to compress natural gas into a liquid, enabling it to be held in storage and then returned to its gaseous state in winter, when demand was high.
Cabot’s father, who rarely demonstrated positive responses to anything his son did, showed his characteristic lack of interest in his son’s paper. Seeking to interest someone, Cabot passed it to the chief engineer of a natural gas pipeline company who was “intrigued to the greatest possible extent” by the idea of compressing natural gas in order to store it. But it was not until 1939 that the first pilot plant was built.
During World War II, in order to meet the energy needs of factories working two or three shifts a day to supply the war effort, the East Ohio Gas Company built an LNG storage facility in Cleveland. In October 1944 one of the tanks failed. Stored LNG seeped into the sewer system and ignited, killing 129 people and creating a mile-long fireball. Subsequently, the causes of the accident were identified: poor ventilation, insufficient containment measures, and the improper use of a particular steel alloy that turned brittle at very low temperatures. The design and safety lessons would be seared into the minds of future developers.2
After World War II, such interest as remained in LNG shifted from using refrigeration to store gas for consumers to quite a different purpose; instead, using it as a way to transport gas over water over long distances.
KILLER FOG
In December 1952 a killer fog gripped London, making it difficult for people even to find their homes, let alone breathe, killing thousands and making many more ill. The fog resulted from the interaction of weather conditions and coal smoke. Rapidly reducing the burning of coal and replacing it with cleaner fuels became a critical priority. The government-owned British Gas Council teamed up with an American company to import natural gas from Louisiana into Britain in the form of LNG. The first shipment to Britain, aboard the Methane Pioneer, arrived in 1957. This may have proved the concept, but importing LNG was a very small business. Yet demand, stimulated by a promotional campaign for “High Speed Gas,” was exceeding all expectations. If this new LNG business in the UK was going to get anywhere, it needed a much larger source of gas.
Royal Dutch Shell bought controlling interest in the nascent LNG company and started developing a large natural gas deposit in Algeria far out in the Sahara Desert. In 1964, two years after Algeria gained its independence from France, its first shipment of liquefied natural gas was loaded on a tanker in Arzew for a month-long , 1,600-mile trip to Canvey Island in the lower Thames. A few months later, another shipment left for La Havre in France.3
This was the real beginning of the international LNG trade. It demonstrated what would become the characteristic practice in the business. It is expensive to turn gas into liquid, transport the liquid, and then turn