The Saint Croix Courier

2008 Oct 31

No Maine LNG applications pending

By BARB RAYNER

ST. ANDREWS — Opponents of liquefied natural gas developments in Passamaquoddy Bay are relishing the news this week that, as of now, there are no LNG facilities with any applications pending before State of Maine agencies.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has dismissed Quoddy Bay LNG from the federal permitting process, stating that they cannot proceed with their engineering review or with the preparation of the draft environmental impact statement due to the company’s incomplete responses.

Following on from that, company president Don Smith has written to Ernest Hilton, presiding officer of Maine’s Board of Environmental Protection (BEP) to say, “it is with great regret that Quoddy is withdrawing its state applications to construct its proposed LNG facility and associated pipelines.”

However, he said, the company expects to file them in the near future but he is uncertain of the date due to the world LNG supply and demand situation.

Smith notes that FERC dismissed their applications without prejudice to filing a new application in the future.

“Quoddy intends to do so, but given global energy and economic markets and trends of the past month, it will not be able to do so by the end of November 2008, which is the deadline by which we had previously told you we would be updating our Maine applications.”

Smith said the company still has not been able to firm up the likely BTU content of their LNG and has not been able to determine whether it will have to build a nitrogen mitigation facility.