LNG project grows Quoddy Bay LLC quadruples plans

PLEASANT POINT – The Oklahoma-based developers who have big plans to build a liquefied natural gas terminal on Passamaquoddy tribal land at Split Rock have made their plans even bigger.

Though Quoddy Bay LLC originally proposed to build a project that could handle 500 million cubic feet of natural gas each day, by the time the company formally notified federal regulators of its intent, it had decided to construct a facility with a daily capacity four times as large.

The company, headed by father-and-son team Don and Brian Smith, intends to construct a facility that has two systems for converting LNG into vapor. This means the project feasibly could process 4 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day, a company spokesman said Tuesday.

Cary Weston, the Bangor-based spokesman, said that only one of the conversion – or regasification – systems would operate at a time, not both. For this reason, the most gas the facility could supply each day to the Maritimes & Northeast pipeline, which runs from Atlantic Canada to Massachusetts, is 2 billion cubic feet, he said.

This limit will be both regulatory and physical, he said. The company plans to build a connecting 35-mile-long pipeline from Split Rock to Princeton that would have a maximum physical capacity of 2 billion cubic feet a day. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is not expected to permit the company to transmit more than 2 billion cubic feet a day into the Maritimes & Northeast pipeline, he said, which means Quoddy Bay could not exceed that limit “even if we wanted to.”

The dual systems will provide redundancy so Quoddy Bay’s supply of natural gas into the pipeline will not be interrupted, according to Weston. If the storage tanks need to be cleaned, or if the conversion system at the tank site needs to be serviced or repaired, the system at Split Rock would be able to convert LNG into gas as it is unloaded at the dock. The gas then would be fed directly into the pipeline, bypassing the Perry storage facility, and pumped toward the lucrative East Coast energy market, he said.

Conversely, if LNG tanker ships were delayed from landing at the two-berth pier, Quoddy Bay could maintain its supply to the Maritimes & Northeast pipeline by pumping from the Perry storage facility. The three tanks there would have a total capacity of 10 billion cubic feet of natural gas, meaning the facility would have five days’ supply of natural gas on-site, if its output were capped at 2 billion cubic feet a day.

Weston said it is quicker to unload LNG from tankers if it is transferred in liquid form directly into storage tanks. It takes longer to unload LNG if it immediately is converted into gas and piped toward Boston, he said, so the preferred unloading method will be to store it on-site in liquid form.

On Tuesday, prices for natural gas on the New York Mercantile Exchange jumped nearly 55 cents to $7.73 per 1,000 cubic feet, according to The Associated Press. At that price, 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas would be worth nearly $15.5 million.

Weston said the likely daily output of the facility would be less than the maximum, closer to 1 billion cubic feet a day. At that rate, and at Tuesday’s market price, the terminal would be able to handle more than $2.8 billion worth of natural gas each year.

Quoddy Bay has been looking in Trinidad and Tobago for a potential partner in the project, Weston said. According to FERC, more than 60 percent of LNG imports to the United States come from the two-island Caribbean nation.

The Smiths travel to Trinidad “regularly,” Weston said, and have talked to public and private companies there as well as to government officials. Weston said there were no further details to release about Quoddy Bay finding a partner because all of the discussions are in preliminary stages.

“It’s just talk,” he said.

According to an article recently published in LNG Daily by Platts, an energy industry information service owned by The McGraw-Hill Cos., media reports from the country earlier this year indicated that a company from Trinidad was negotiating an 80 percent ownership stake in the project. The Trinidad government, it said, was considering a 10 percent stake. Don Smith declined to comment further about the discussions, the article indicated.

According to Weston, Quoddy Bay also is considering the unusual practice of offering contracts to LNG suppliers at fixed prices.

By doing so, Quoddy Bay could set up a more economically stable environment for LNG transactions, he said. Sales now are made through a spot-bidding process, which sometimes results in an LNG tanker changing course at sea in order to head toward a buyer who is willing to pay more than the buyer at the ship’s original destination.

A fixed contract would provide Quoddy Bay with a long-term LNG supply and the contracted supplier with a long-term customer, Weston said. He said he did not know specifically what kind of pricing figures the company was considering.

According to the Platts article, Don Smith has said Quoddy Bay may offer suppliers long-term contracts to buy LNG for roughly $5.50 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Costs for mining, processing and transmitting LNG likely would be around $2.50 to $3 per 1,000 cubic feet, the article quoted Smith as saying. With the same gas possibly selling for as high as $12 to $14 per 1,000 cubic feet in the East Coast market, LNG companies could expect to make “outrageous profits,” Smith reportedly said.

Some producers worry that a potential oversupply of LNG and increased availability of the fuel from Alaska could result in prices plummeting in coming years, according to the article, but Smith said a fixed contract at $5.50 per 1,000 cubic feet still would give suppliers a “healthy guaranteed profit.”