It may have been a long flight with a lot of jet lag, but Port Edward Mayor Dave MacDonald is calling council's recent trip to Malaysia to get a first-hand look at Petronas' LNG operations a real eye opener.
As well as meeting with the company's vice-president of power and vice-president of upstream exploration at Petronas world headquarters during a visit to the country last week, councillors were taken to an LNG export terminal similar to that proposed for Lelu Island – including being taken on board one of the tankers as it prepared to be loaded. Mayor MacDonald said being on the site and seeing answered a lot of questions.
"We went by one of the buildings and they let us off the bus so we could hear the noise, which we were concerned about, and we were able to talk just like we would in a normal situation ," he said.
"It was very clean, and safety was a big thing there ... I was impressed with the whole procedure, and they were very open with us. I can't say anything bad about what I saw."
In addition to the headquarters and the terminal, MacDonald said council was taken to an academy of sorts where the people captaining the tankers go for training, and he was very impressed with what he saw.
" They took us up to where the captain would be seated, and the training simulator could simulate storms, simulate shakes and simulate moving around heavy traffic,"
he explained.
"The training is awesome in terms of what they teach. The cadets spend three years there and really learn how to do their job."
Port Edward councillors have also been invited by the BG Group to tour an LNG terminal in Trinidad in January.