In a move that could affect the prospects for a liquefied natural gas terminal in Passamaquoddy Bay, Canadian provincial authorities gave conditional approval Friday to Irving Oil’s plans for an LNG facility near Saint John, New Brunswick.

The proposed terminal would be at Mispec, near Saint John, a little more than an hour from Pleasant Point, Maine.

A Tulsa, Okla., energy partnership and the Passamaquoddy Tribe have been considering a similar facility near Eastport.

That $300 million facility would be built on 42 acres of tribal land. It would connect with the Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline, which carries natural gas from Sable Island off Nova Scotia through Maine and on to markets in the Northeastern United States.

The New Brunswick facility would be a first for Atlantic Canada. It would supply some of the U.S. gas market.

The Passamaquoddy plan has run into strong opposition from some tribal members.

“I am not familiar with that project,” tribal attorney Craig Francis said Saturday, “but if it is utilizing some of the existing capacity in the pipeline then they obviously are going to be competing. There’s only limited capacity that comes through Canada and into the United States.”

LNG is natural gas that has been cooled to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit for shipment or storage. Since 2001, numerous energy companies have announced plans to build more than a dozen LNG import facilities in the United States.

The U.S. Department of Energy has cited recent increases in domestic U.S. natural gas prices and improvements in technologies as reasons for the projects. In Maine, Gov. John Baldacci has encouraged communities to consider hosting a terminal, including possible use of the state-owned Sears Island in Penobscot Bay.

Worries about environmental and safety issues – particularly in light of terrorism fears – have spurred strong opposition to Maine coastal communities serving as hosts, particularly Harpswell and Searsport.

The proposed Irving facility is to be situated at the company’s deepwater marine terminal Irving Canaport, in operation since 1970. Plans call for three 160,000-cubic-meter LNG tanks and a throughput capacity of 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. Irving Canaport is 65 miles from the U.S. border.

The Irving project has been in the permitting stage for three years, the company said in a news release. It was not clear during the weekend what conditions the provincial government placed on the project.

Irving Oil expects the LNG receiving terminal to be operating by 2007.

The Passamaquoddy proposal is nowhere near that far.

“Without me having read what the conditional approval is, it is very hard to say how far ahead they are in the permitting than we would be. We haven’t even gotten the ball rolling at this point,” Francis said.

Tribal officials voted last week to put the issue out to the tribe’s 650 members within the next 30 days.

But tribal state Rep. Fred Moore said Saturday he did not view the Irving proposal as competition.

“I think it will help the Passamaquoddy project because it is determined that LNG is safe and acceptable,” he said. “It has gone through review not only by the provincial government but the federal government of Canada.”

Moore said that he believes the tribe will continue to move forward on the proposal.

“We are going to be looking at an LNG facility no matter what,” he said. “LNG is coming. It brings tremendous opportunity and benefit to the communities that host it.”

Quoddy Bay LLC of Tulsa, Okla., an energy development partnership, announced a proposal last month to build a terminal on the Passamaquoddy reservation, also known as Sipayik. The proposal estimates that as many as 1,000 jobs could be created during the construction phase and more than 70 full-time jobs once the facility is running.

The Passamaquoddy proposal has encountered opposition within the tribe. “Our prayers have been answered if they take it and we don’t get it,” former tribal Rep. Madonna Soctomah said Saturday on word of the Saint John approval. “That will mean that we will have survived another stage of annihilation. Look at the hurdles in all these decades and we are still here, and we have survived.”