Businessman Don Smith readies a deal Down East

PLEASANT POINT – Pro-LNG people see Don Smith, 60, as a saint, his mission to create jobs Down East.

Anti-LNG people see him as a serpent inviting them to take a bite of the fruit from the forbidden money tree.

Smith sees himself as a savvy businessman who is trying to put together a deal that could change the landscape of eastern Washington County.

He is the founder, chairman and CEO of the Oklahoma City-based Smith Cogeneration and a partner in Quoddy Bay LLC, which would develop a $400 million liquefied natural gas terminal on reservation land at Gleason Cove.

Quoddy Bay has partnered with the Passamaquoddy Tribe, which last year voted to approve the project.

Smith was born in Savannah, Ga. His father served in the U.S. Army. “As an Army brat I lived in Washington, D.C., Germany, Japan, you know, as we followed my father around. My folks were divorced when I was about 9. So from 9 onward I lived in Lincoln, R.I., until I went to college,” he said.

Smith said his grandmother Alice Smith was a big influence on his life. “She was very interested in human rights, ultimately it became women’s rights,” he said. “It started out where she worked very hard in state government to help Native American tribes in Rhode Island to obtain better education and better health care.” Eventually, she ran for the Rhode Island state Senate, but lost when her former husband, Smith’s grandfather, campaigned against her.

A trained economist and former college professor, Smith received his undergraduate degree in economics from Harvard University where noted economist John Kenneth Galbraith influenced his career.

“He was a world-renowned social thinker, concerned about issues of justice, competition and the individual consumer and whether they were free to make choices,” he said. Smith received his Ph.D. in economics from Brown University.

He married fellow student Carolyn Smith. They had two children, Brian and Michael. They divorced, and he later remarried.

In academia, he was a specialist in regional economic development. He also directed research at the Public Interest Economics Center in Washington, D.C.

In 1977, then-U.S. Sen. Gary Hart hired him to serve as his energy economist. Hart later faded from the political scene after a scandal over an alleged extramarital affair erupted during his bid for the presidency.

“Gary changed my life. Gary was a liberal on social issues, a liberal on environmental issues, a hawk on defense issues and a thinker on tax and energy policies,” he said.

During his Hart years, Smith saw the moneyed people who were part of Colorado’s landscape. “I decided I wanted to be one of them. I was in my mid- to late 30s,” Smith said.

Shortly after he was hired as the chief financial officer for an Oklahoma-based gas-exploration company, a gas glut kicked the bottom out of the market.

“I wondered what Johnny Appleseed would do if there was a surplus of apple trees. Would he continue to plant apples? I said no, Johnny Appleseed would find new products. So I investigated new technologies that could burn gas to make electricity and steam,” he said.

He decided to build Smith Cogeneration Inc. Cogeneration is the simultaneous production of electricity and heat. “So you get twice as much bang for your buck,” Smith said.

Oklahoma utility experts called him a “snake oil salesman from Harvard.”

Smith persevered. “I negotiated the construction of a plant with GE, the supply of gas from good gas producers [and] the sale of steam to a troubled tire plant that was going to shut down and move to Mexico,” he said. “We saved 3,000 jobs.”

Smith also has ventured into the global market with his cogeneration idea.

A business associate introduced Smith to the idea of building an LNG terminal at Pleasant Point.

Tribal state Rep. Fred Moore promoted the idea to Maine lobbyist Jim Mitchell. “Jimmy then went to a relative by marriage, Stuart Price, who is educated as an attorney, but who is a business guy in Tulsa,” he said. Price and Smith are friends. They put together Quoddy Bay LLC.

Although the company focused on the international business connection of getting LNG and resolving other business issues, it initially failed to take its message to the residents of eastern Washington County.

So Smith took over as point man and has been in Maine for the past few months trying to sell his deal.

If Perry voters approve the project, Smith said, “we have enough money to push through this, we don’t have enough money to build the plant. In this case, we will bring in a senior industry leader that has a great track record and a lot of money, and we will introduce them to the community. I think this is going to happen because people are recognizing we are earnest, that we are well enough financed internally that money won’t stop us at this stage.”