PORTLAND – After winding up on the losing end of a couple of municipal votes, Gov. John E. Baldacci said Wednesday his administration is planning an entirely new educational campaign to illustrate the merits of a Maine liquefied natural gas terminal.

“Once all of the information gets out there, then at least people will be able to make a much more informed decision,” Baldacci told a business-breakfast crowd in Portland. “But we’ve got to have engagement, it can’t be [perceived] as though ‘Augusta is pushing it on us, so it’s got to be bad.’ The way Maine works is that it works locally first, so we’ve got to engage those local communities and we’re going to have to be a little more proactive in terms of providing the information.”

Earlier this month, Searsport residents rejected the construction of an LNG terminal in their community by a 10-1 ratio in a nonbinding straw poll. On March 9, residents in Harpswell rejected leasing 70 acres of town-owned waterfront land to TransCanada and ConocoPhillips for an LNG terminal. An advisory vote on an LNG proposal is scheduled for June 8 in Cumberland.

Emphasizing that LNG is cleaner than coal-fired or oil-fired sources of power, Baldacci said diversifying the state’s energy sources would ensure that all “eggs aren’t in one basket.”

“We need to, as a country, recognize that our dependence on certain areas for our energy puts our foreign policy in a difficult position which it shouldn’t be in,” he said. “These are related issues.”

In addition to enlarging the state’s energy mix, an LNG terminal would give Maine’s construction trade a $500 million boost that Baldacci said would have a significant economic ripple effect. Opponents to the plan have argued an LNG terminal would have exactly the opposite effect by degrading local fisheries, diminishing the scenic appeal of the coastal area and posing a potentially dangerous explosive threat to local residents.

“I think frankly people in Maine need to have more information about LNG,” Baldacci said. “What we’re prepared to do, and what we’re undertaking now is to put our state planning people together with our economic development people and becoming a resource of information in a generic way so people can feel a little more comfortable about it and not get scared about what we’re talking about and understand what’s taking place.”