Lubec LNG queries lead back to Okla. developer

LUBEC – The man who has made inquiries in North Lubec about acquiring property for a potential liquefied natural gas facility has ties to the Oklahoma developer who has plans to put an LNG import terminal at Pleasant Point a few miles to the north in Washington County.

Hubert E. Bereman, the vice president for development engineering for Smith Cogeneration International Inc., has been contacting landowners on Seward’s Neck in recent months.

But Bereman said he represented a different company – Bear Creek Investments – in his introductions.

Smith Cogeneration International Inc. is the parent company of a number of Oklahoma-based companies headed by Donald Mitchell Smith. Smith is a partner in Quoddy Bay LLC, a group that has aligned with the Passamaquoddy Tribe to develop an LNG terminal at Split Rock, a sacred site on the reservation.

A corporate owner of an 8-acre parcel with waterfront footage confirmed earlier

this week that Bereman had inquired about getting an option on the company’s land toward the tip of Seward’s Neck. The company declined to move forward with Bereman.

“Hugh Bereman of Bear Creek Investments was the person who made contact with our company, and had some correspondence with head office overseas,” Shirley Roach-Albert, vice president for North American operations of Stolt Sea Farms, said Thursday. “I didn’t speak with him directly,” she added.

Quoddy Bay LLC announced its intentions to bring LNG to Washington County 18 months ago. A second developer, Down East LNG of Washington, D.C., surfaced in July, saying its facility was being planned for Robbinston.

A third group, the locally owned BP Consulting, said in August that it was preparing to site an LNG import terminal in Calais.

Then came rumors – circulating widely since summer – of a fourth, unnamed LNG developer trying to make inroads into North Lubec.

But the man who had been talking the most about LNG possibilities for Lubec, Robert Peacock, said earlier this week he did not know who was involved.

“I’ve seen them, everybody’s seen them,” Peacock, a Lubec resident and a navigational pilot out of Eastport, said Wednesday of the company’s identity.

“They’re looking, but I haven’t got a clue who they are.”

Bereman could not be reached Friday at his Oklahoma City office.

The publicist for Quoddy Bay LLC said Friday that Bereman had been looking at property on the Washington County coast “last May.”

“Quoddy Bay has looked at several communities for a possible storage facility for LNG,” Dennis Bailey of Portland said on Friday.

He said he was not aware that Bereman had used “Bear Creek Investments” as his working identity.

“I’ve never heard of that,” Bailey said.

A short while later, Bailey e-mailed the information that “Bear Creek Investments is a land acquisition company that was searching for land that may have been appropriate for an LNG storage facility. All landowners that were approached by Bear Creek signed confidentiality agreements and were completely aware that Bear Creek was looking for potential locations suitable for LNG storage in connection with the LNG import terminal at Pleasant Point.”

As Smith Cogeneration in 2001, Bereman and Smith had teamed together to try to get a $600 million power plant operational as an economic development project on American Indian land in eastern Oklahoma, according to an Oklahoma Legislature Web site.

Called the Smith Pocola Energy Project at Pocola, Okla., the proposed plant received some state water and air permits in 2001 and 2002, but was never constructed.

Smith projected that as many as 400 workers would be employed over two years in building the facility, and that the plant would be run by 40 employees in what Smith called “high-paying jobs.”

Bereman served as Smith’s engineer on the Poteau River project. The LeFlore County site had been picked because it was strategic, with two natural-gas lines extending through the area.

One of the editors for the Poteau Daily News remembers how project plans rose and fell.

“They were getting all kinds of permits, but then it just kind of disappeared,” said Laura Young, whose paper followed Smith and his project.

“They said, ‘We have land and permits, and now we need some financing.’ Then there was nothing.

“It didn’t fly. It didn’t do anything. It pretty well fizzled out.”