PLEASANT POINT – The state Bureau of Parks and Lands has asked an Oklahoma developer of a proposed liquefied natural gas facility to “table” its application for a submerged lands lease on the Pleasant Point Reservation until that company is better prepared to go forward.

Dan Pritchard, bureau director, said Friday the agency recently informed Quoddy Bay LLC that there would be no further review of the application for a project on Passamaquoddy tribal land until it is made more complete.

“We reviewed it, and we have discussed with the applicant the possibility of tabling it until such time they are ready to proceed,” Pritchard said.

“My understanding, while not written, is that they are agreeable to that.”

Quoddy Bay first announced its intentions to build a $400 million LNG import facility in May 2004 in partnership with the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Pleasant Point. The company is concurrently looking at securing land in either Perry or Robbinston on which to site LNG storage tanks.

The proposed site at Split Rock would involve the construction of a pier extending 2,000 feet into Passamaquoddy Bay, north of Route 190.

The project has raised considerable local opposition, both internally from some tribal members living at Pleasant Point and from others living in surrounding communities.

Eight tribal members last month filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Bangor against the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, which gave approval to the tribe’s lease agreement of the Split Rock site with Quoddy Bay.

Reached for a response Friday, the project manager for Quoddy Bay said he did not consider the decision by the Bureau of Parks and Lands a setback.

“We have agreed [with the Bureau of Parks and Lands] to hold off the permit application until we permit with the rest of the state agencies,” Brian Smith said. “They prefer that, because all the applications involve a duplication of tasks – public meetings and environmental reports.

“We happily will do it that way.”

The new plan for Quoddy Bay’s submission of permit applications to several agencies at the same time is a change of direction for the company.

Gaining a permit for the submerged lands lease would have given Quoddy Bay some standing to apply to the other state agencies to construct a pier at Pleasant Point.

“Originally we thought we could get the submerged lands lease permit before all the rest, but now we are happy to do them all at the same time,” Smith said.

Quoddy Bay had submitted its permit application to Bureau of Parks and Lands on Sept. 19. Quoddy Bay indicated at the time that it had not completed its environmental studies that should accompany its application.

Pritchard said that was one of the reasons that the application was tabled.

Further, Pritchard said, “our normal operations [for permitting] is to conduct a parallel review with other state agencies.”

Pritchard wants to see the application when Quoddy Bay makes applications to the several other state agencies that will review the company’s requests for other permits.

“Since each application would likely require some sort of public forum, we could hold joint hearings, so the public would only need to gather once to voice their concerns or support,” Pritchard said. “The individual agency staffs would be able to review the entire proposal at once, too.”

Those plans don’t sit well with Linda Godfrey of Eastport, the coordinator of Save Passamaquoddy Bay, the local opposition group.

“While it may be that the state feels that this would be for some purpose of convenience, the issues are so significant and so life-changing that we will be speaking with the governor’s office and his LNG-designee, Martha Freeman of the State Planning Office,” Godfrey said Friday.

“We wish that each step of the state’s permitting process would require individual attention, and individual public-input sessions.”

Representatives of several state agencies met last week with Quoddy Bay at the Augusta law offices of Bernstein, Shur, Sawyer & Nelson for an overview of the project proposed for Pleasant Point.

The decision to put the permit application on hold coincides with the apparent recent departure of Craig Francis, the attorney for the Passamaquoddy Tribe.

He has been working hand-in-hand with Quoddy Bay to bring its proposed LNG facility to the Split Rock area of Pleasant Point for nearly two years.

Francis had his first day on the job on Thursday for a private law firm in Portland, Jensen, Baird, Gardner & Henry, according to his new secretary. His title there is chair of the Indian Law Practice Group.

Neither of the Passamaquoddy tribal governors at the Pleasant Point and Indian Township reservations, Melvin Francis and Robert Newell, respectively, could be reached Friday to confirm Francis’ departure.

However, Smith said: “We have been informed that Craig Francis has left the direct employment of the tribe.”

Francis did not return a call to his Portland office.