Activist offers tips to LNG opponents

ST. ANDREWS, New Brunswick – The executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada spoke to a receptive audience Tuesday night as she offered tips on how to keep three proposed liquefied natural gas terminals from being built in Passamaquoddy Bay.

Elizabeth May offered observations and advice to those who hope to keep supertankers from their backyard.

The session was held at the All Saints Anglican Church and was sponsored by the Fundy Baykeeper and Periwinkle Productions.

Her first tip: Start with the basics.

She recommended that people write letters to political leaders at both the federal and provincial levels, organize and mobilize, and enlist the help of the media.

It all began more than a year ago when the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Pleasant Point voted to support construction of a plant on tribal land. They aligned themselves with Oklahoma-based Quoddy Bay LLC. The company hopes to build a $400 million project that will include a terminal at Split Rock at Pleasant Point and an 8-mile underwater cryogenic pipe connecting to storage tanks in Robbinston.

The second company, Washington D.C.-based Downeast LNG, hopes to build a $400 million facility in Robbinston.

A third developer, the locally based BP Consulting LLC, working with the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Indian Township, hopes to locate a $500 million terminal between St. Croix Island and Devil’s Head Park in the St. Croix River.

All three projects have drawn a group of vocal opponents. May was there to support their effort.

She urged opponents to focus on the movement of ships through the environmentally sensitive waters near Head Harbour on Campobello Island, New Brunswick.

May rejected the argument that if Canada stopped ships from passing through Head Harbour, it would lead to retaliation by the United States. “Right now Canada supplies more oil and gas to the United States than Saudi Arabia,” she said. “There is not going to be a tit for tat retaliatory blocking of access for the movement of energy in North America. There’s far too much at stake. Right now Canada is America’s gas tank.”

She said that it was a positive sign that several Canadian leaders including the premier of New Brunswick, Bernard Lord, have come out against an LNG terminal in Passamaquoddy Bay. She recommended that the group enlist the help of even more political leaders. “The more Canadian leaders [there are] that oppose this the better,” she said.

May also suggested that even though cash-rich St. Andrews could fight such a development, she said that did not mean that the cash-strapped Washington County could not. Although the three developers have promised jobs, May said it was important to educate local residents that it was their environment that would be affected.

“This should not be seen as anything other than a networking and collaborative [effort] across the board, because this is one ecoregion,” she said. “A number of communities will be as badly impacted as we will here should this go ahead.”