Tribe’s LNG plan still may have life

PLEASANT POINT – The issue of the Passamaquoddy Tribe and a developer wanting to locate a liquefied natural gas terminal on tribal land on the Washington County coast isn’t dead yet.

An exclusivity agreement between the tribe and Oklahoma-based Quoddy Bay LLC to build a $400 million LNG facility on tribal land is scheduled to lapse on May 14. While opponents want the LNG plan to evaporate and go away at that time, some tribal officials aren’t ready to give up.

Craig Francis, the tribe’s attorney, said Monday he did not believe the process was over. “I can’t imagine that the tribe and-or Quoddy Bay is going to allow an opportunity with such significant potential impact to the region just to not go forward again, but we really haven’t had a chance to sit down and discuss what the options are,” he said.

Earlier this year, the developer learned that a 1986 agreement between the town of Perry and the tribe gave Perry residents a say over any commercial development on land the tribe annexed from the town. On March 28, Perry residents voted 279-214 to reject the project even though the tribe and developer promised the town $1 million annually for the next 30 years, possibly longer.

Opponents of the plan met with the tribal council last week in a special meeting.

“We asked them to permanently dissolve any exclusivity agreements with Quoddy Bay LLC,” opponent Vera Francis said Monday, “and to stop any related planned or current tribal land lease agreements and basically to develop an economic community development approach that makes best use of the considerable talents of all the people of Sipayik [Pleasant Point] and the Passamaquoddy Tribe”

She called the exclusivity agreement “lopsided” in the developer’s favor.

Craig Francis said the tribal councilors at the special meeting merely agreed to go back to the discussion table with the developer before any new agreement could be reached. He said the councilors’ vote was neither thumbs up nor thumbs down on the project.

“So in other words, until we sit down at the table to decide what direction we’re going there’s not going to be anything, and we have one more month on the exclusivity agreement. So if it expires then it’s not going to be renewed until we go back to the table,” he said.

The tribal attorney said he expects there will be a meeting between the developer and tribal council soon.

Vera Francis laughed Monday when she heard the attorney’s interpretation of the meeting with opponents. Vera Francis said she was at the meeting, the tribe’s attorney was not.

Gov. Melvin Francis also did not attend the meeting.

Minutes of the meeting were not available Monday night.

She invited the tribe’s attorney to listen to a tape of the meeting.

Vera Francis said there was a lot of discussion about the secrecy that surrounded the exclusivity agreement.

“They can’t do anything now unless it is in front of the council and then it’s open to public scrutiny,” Vera Francis said. “This particular motion requested that there be no signatures on any agreement without this going through a public process. What that meeting did was bring everything out into the public. It is asking for transparency.”

Last year, the tribe voted to move forward with plans to build an LNG terminal on tribal land.

For months neither the tribe nor the developer met with the public.