DEBLOIS — North America’s only peat-burning power plant, completed three years ago at a cost of $51 million, is on the verge of going out of business, its chief operating officer said Wednesday.

Paul LePage blamed the pending closure of Down East Peat Co. on technology problems, high transmission costs and a deep recession that has left the Northeast with an oversupply of electricity.

“As of now, unless we can find a buyer (for the plant), or someone to buy the power, we’re going to have to dismantle it,” said LePage, predicting a shutdown within a few weeks.

“We just can’t continue. We’re broke. We have no money,” he said.

Down East Peat had been supplying power to Boston Edison under a 20-year contract. But the plant’s owners, faced with the prospect of continued losses, opted to allow the utility to buy its way out of the contract last June.

Sales of smaller amounts of electricity to other customers have failed to bring in enough revenue to maintain operations, LePage said.

The plant’s closure is seen as a setback to the chronically depressed economy of Washington County and to efforts to advance the use of peat as an inexpensive and non-polluting source of energy.

The 22-megawatt plant opened in 1989 on a hillside next to Denbo Heath, a 650-acre peat bog that stretches for a mile and has been mined for decades for horticultural use.

Peat, a fibrous accumulation of dead plants formed over many centuries, has long been a source of fuel in Ireland, Finland and other countries. Interest in converting peat to energy in this country increased after oil prices shot up.

In Augusta, a state energy planner expressed disappointment at the project’s outlook and said Maine would benefit from having alternative fuels such as peat as part of its energy mix.

Bruce White suggested that the research developed by Down East Peat could someday be used in other peat-related ventures if the economics become more favorable.

“We wouldn’t want to close the door on it,” he said.

LePage said the Maine plant’s troubles began during the construction phase when an experimental extrusion process designed to form four-inch-thick peat logs proved unworkable because the weather was too wet.

Managers turned to a more conventional harvesting system, which could not provide enough peat and forced the use of wood chips to fuel the plant, at nearly three times the cost.

“The economics threw it out,” said LePage, noting that a plant intended to run exclusively on peat was using only 27 percent peat and 73 percent wood chips.

An equally significant problem, he said, was the high cost of wheeling the plant’s output onto utility transmission lines and into the New England power grid.

LePage said hopes that Maine utilities would team up to buy the plant’s output were dashed by the availability of less expensive sources of power, including the nuclear plant at Point Lepreau, New Brunswick.

The probable shutdown, he said, means the elimination of about 45 year-round jobs at the plant and another 25 jobs during the harvesting season between May and early October.

Despite the plant’s troubles, LePage maintained that peat remains an economically and environmentally sound energy alternative.

“If we had enough acreage of peat, this would be one of the cheapest sources of power anywhere in the country. Peat can be harvested at a fraction of the cost of wood, oil or coal,” he said.

Although the company had been fined several years ago for discharging peat into the Narraguagus River, LePage said peat-burning plants spew few particles in the air and are far less harmful to the environment than other sources of electricity.