First, a housekeeping note from my August piece on the Mitchell-Baldacci clan: while my family tree is correct, several attentive readers pointed out that I reversed the meanings of “second cousin” and “first cousin, once removed.” Sen. Mitchell and Gov. Baldacci are indeed the latter, just as Jim Mitchell and his brothers and first cousins are all second cousins to the governor and his siblings and first cousins. My apologies for any confusion.
This month, let me turn your attention eastwards to the shores of Passamaquoddy Bay to ask: why has this remote, fog-shrouded, tidally-challenged embayment on the far fringe of the country attracted not one, but three proposals for liquefied natural gas terminals, even though it is hundreds of miles from major markets? The answer: it seems to be the closest a land-based LNG terminal can get to Boston without finding itself in Canada.
“You start looking up the coast and the first place that meets all the criteria is Passamaquoddy Bay,” explained Brian Smith of Quoddy LNG of Washington, DC, which has proposed a two-berth LNG terminal at the Pleasant Point Indian reservation in Perry. “You want to be as close as you can to the big markets, but in an area remote enough to make it an unattractive target” for terrorists.
U.S. demand for natural gas is expected to grow by 40 percent by 2025, while North American supplies dwindle. Experts say there’s lots of gas elsewhere in the world, but most of it will have to be chilled into liquid form (at minus 259 degrees) and shipped to the U.S. on special tankers.
But the U.S. doesn’t have enough LNG terminals, facilities where the substance can be stored, reheated into a gas, and sent into domestic pipelines. At present there are only five — in Massachusetts, Maryland, Georgia, Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico — and the National Petroleum Council, a federal advisory body, says the U.S. will need to expand three of these and build six to eight more to meet future demand.
In response, more than 50 terminals have been proposed to serve the U.S., including two in the Bahamas, three in Mexico, three in Canada, and 10 offshore terminals where gas is pumped into underwater lines. Five are under construction and 24 more have already received government approval, leading some wondering how many more will really get built.
“It’s pretty outrageous that we have so many proposals pending, as there’s no way they can all be built from an economic perspective,” said Susan Reid of the Conservation Law Foundation in Boston. “Developers are racing to get to the market first and hoping the others will fall by the wayside.”
But the Northeast has proven particularly thorny for LNG developers. While the region’s gas supply is already tight — there are no local gas fields and lots of new gas-fired power plants — its coastal population is relatively dense, environmentally aware and politically astute.
A proposed terminal in Fall River, Massachusetts, is opposed by state officials, who recently passed a law restricting the passage of tankers under state bridges, including one en route. Local resistance nixed a plan for the islands of Boston Harbor and pushed other developers further downeast, into ever remoter, poorer, and emptier parts of Maine: first Harpswell, Searsport and Gouldsboro, now Perry, Robbinston and Calais in easternmost Washington County.
“The process has become like water: it’s trying to seek the path of least resistance on its way to the bottom,” says George Finch, city manager of Eastport, which borders the Pleasant Point site.
Developers have hoped that the people of easternmost Maine — one of New England’s poorest areas — will be relatively welcoming to development. They’ve received support from the Passamaquoddy tribal government (which would host the Quoddy LNG terminal) and the voters of Robbinston (who voted 227-83 in support of a terminal proposed there.)
“We found the most supportive communities in this part of Maine,” says Dean Girdis, president of Downeast LNG, the company behind the Robbinston proposal. “I wouldn’t want to site anything in a community that doesn’t want it.”
But even here the proposals have encountered steep resistance as developers apply for state and federal permits.
Lobstermen, scallop fishermen and salmon farmers all fear the security zones around the LNG tankers will displace them from their grounds. Authorities in Eastport are concerned about disruptions to operations at their modest port or to Route 190, the only road to and from their island city, which runs through the Quoddy LNG site.
“We’re told that there really isn’t anything that can go wrong,” says Finch. “Well, if that’s the case, then why isn’t it being built in Portland or Boston where the customers really are?”
The Robbinston proposal has stirred up a hornet’s nest in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, the genteel resort that is that province’s equivalent of Bar Harbor, and is located just across a mile-wide bay from where the huge tankers would tie up. The Canadian government, which controls the deepwater passage into Passamaquoddy Bay, has said it won’t allow the LNG tankers through at all, citing environmental and safety concerns. (The U.S. maintains it has undisputed right of passage to its ports, and the dispute may wind up in international court.)
“This is one of the last natural areas in our country which houses an incredible amount of sealife, shorelife and coastal livelihoods,” says Linda Godfrey of Save Passamaquoddy Bay, an umbrella group for LNG opponents on both sides of the border. “It is just totally incompatible with industrialization.”
Opponents also question whether any of the local terminals are necessary, given that a large LNG terminal is already under construction in Saint John, New Brunswick, 80 miles to the east, to serve the New England market. Two proposed offshore terminals off Gloucester, Massachusetts, have already been permitted and one is expected to begin delivering gas this winter.
But Mariano Gurfinkel of the Center for Energy Economics of the University of Texas-Austin says that its good to have excess capacity to respond to unexpected demand and keep prices in check. “Terminals can cost upwards of $500 million. I doubt that their proponents are going to do this if they don’t think they would make money,” he says. q
– Colin Woodard is the author of The Lobster Coast, The Republic of Pirates, and Ocean’s End. He lives in Portland and maintains colinwoodard.com