FREDERICTON, New Brunswick — A lawyer for a rival Quebec-based pipeline company says the Maritimes will miss out if Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline is allowed to pump Sable Island natural gas directly to the United States.

“The sole purpose of their application is to sell as much gas as they can in the U.S. and the last market they would serve would be the Maritimes,” Raynold Langlois, a lawyer for Gaz Metropolitain, said in an interview.

“They have committed to paying transportation costs right to the U.S. and they have to amortize that cost with capacity, which is going to be used up.”

Gaz Metropolitain is a principal player in the Trans Maritimes Pipeline project, a potential rival to the plan being put forward at a National Energy Board-sponsored public hearing in Fredericton.

Maritimes and Northeast is proposing a line which runs through Nova Scotia to Moncton, then running across New Brunswick past Fredericton to the Maine border near St. Stephen. They hope the gas will be flowing through their line by November 1999.

Trans Maritimes also would come to Fredericton along the same route, but it would extend the line to northern New Brunswick and into Quebec. Sable Island gas could reach the American Northeast via this line if a branch is built extending north from Portland, Maine.

Trans Maritimes filed evidence with the joint review panel on March 7, allowing it to be an intervenor and attempt to influence their decision on the Maritimes and Northeast application.

Their own application is expected to be complete by August, when the National Energy Board will have to decide if another round of public hearings on the new application is necessary. Both projects could end up being certified.

The Gaz Metropolitain lawyer agrees that the Sable Island gas has to be developed and sold. But Langlois argues that the first market to serve should be in the Maritimes and not the U.S. market.

Meanwhile, the joint public review panel is considering the merits of making public the details of agreements between the developers of the Sable gas projects — Mobil Oil and Maritimes and Northeast — and three potential customers: Nova Scotia Power, NB Power and the Irving industries.

The developers of the pipeline have made no secret of the fact that the project will primarily serve the energy-hungry American market.