Qatar LNG tank explosion and Shell litigation

Tom recalls (via Professor Pelloux) that roughly thirty years before this lecture, a Shell-designed LNG storage tank in the Persian Gulf at Qatar suffered brittle fracture and destroyed the harbor. The tank had been built to a 1940s API/British specification in the 1970s–'80s despite mature knowledge of brittle fracture, with poor steel and significant welding defects. Qatar took Shell to the World Court; Shell prevailed by arguing the failure was an RPG strike by the Emir's enemies rather than material/weld failure. Shell was barred from doing business in Qatar for several decades.

Such big fireballs have happened. Has anybody ever heard of any with liquefied natural gas? In the late '40s, if you look up LNG explosions, you'll see they wiped out a fair-sized amount of Cleveland, Ohio, when a tank of LNG blew up in the late '40s. There's another one that you will not find if you Google it. They blew up the entire harbor in Qatar in the Persian Gulf when a tank of LNG exploded, back about thirty years ago. That one has been sort of quieted down. Shell designed the steel tank for holding the LNG, and they did it to 1940s specs — only they built this in the 1970s or '80s, and it was a brittle fracture. We knew a lot about brittle fracture, but they were using a 1940s API spec to build it, and it had tremendous welding defects, lousy steel, everything built to a British standard. They blew up the harbor and killed a lot of people.