State official questions LNG pier sites

BANGOR – A state official whose office will have to issue permits if two proposed liquefied natural gas import terminals are to be built has called into question whether the development sites on Passamaquoddy Bay are suitable for long docking piers that would be needed for the facilities.

Dan Prichard, supervisor of the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands’ submerged lands program, raised his concerns about proposals from Quoddy Bay LNG and Downeast LNG in letters filed last week with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The letters are available for public viewing on the Internet, at www.ferc.gov, in the Web site’s eLibrary system.

“Given the length of Maine’s coastline and the shallow depth and narrow waterway at the proposed terminal site relative to the navigation and berthing requirements for LNG vessels, it is difficult to imagine that the proposed site is the most suitable,” Prichard wrote in each letter.

According to Prichard, Quoddy Bay’s pier would extend more than 1,000 feet from shore, blocking off nearly 40 percent of the coastal waters that separate Split Rock from the Canadian border. LNG unloaded at the site, on Passamaquoddy tribal land at Pleasant Point, would be piped to storage tanks more than a mile away in Perry.

The docking pier proposed for Robbinston by Downeast LNG would extend roughly 4,000 feet into Passamaquoddy Bay, or more than half the distance from shore to the boundary with Canada, Prichard wrote. It would be more than three times longer than a 1,200-foot-long oil tanker pier in South Portland, which is the largest terminal facility in Maine, he indicated.

The bureau’s rules do not allow piers to extend more than 1,000 feet from shore unless there is no reasonable alternative, according to Prichard. Because each pier will extend into state waters, each developer will have to get a submerged lands lease from Maine Department of Conservation, which includes the Bureau of Parks and Lands, Prichard said Tuesday.

He said his letter to FERC does not mean the bureau has taken a formal position on the proposed developments. Neither developer has active lease applications submitted to the state, he said.

Save Passamaquoddy Bay, a group that opposes development of LNG terminal facilities on the bay, issued statements Wednesday supporting the concerns raised in Prichard’s letter. Officers with each development company, however, said in separate interviews Wednesday that their respective sites are the best ones they could find in Maine for LNG development.

Each developer indicated the length of the proposed piers would prevent them from having to dredge and blast underwater, which could have significant environmental consequences, in order to reach to the depth needed to accommodate LNG tanker traffic. The sites are sheltered adequately from the open ocean and the local communities at each project site have expressed support for the projects, they said.

Dean Girdis, president of Washington-based Downeast LNG, said Wednesday that his firm looked at 27 sites in New England, many of them in Maine, before it settled on Robbinston. It considered Searsport, where there already is a developed port facility, but determined a pier there would have to be more than a mile long to reach water deep enough for an LNG tanker.

“I understand his concern,” Girdis said of Prichard’s letter. As for the unsuitability of the site, he added, “I would argue that is not the case.”

The inshore shipping channel connecting the site to the Bay of Fundy would be the widest in the United States used for LNG traffic, he said. The nearest shipping channel would be more than 4,000 feet away from the end of the pier, while the public pier in St. Andrew’s, on the other side of the international border, would be about 13,000 feet away.

Brian Smith of Quoddy Bay LNG said his firm’s estimated pier length of 1,300 feet is a “significant size.” In his letter about Quoddy Bay, Prichard referred to a pier length of 1,700 feet but Smith said that measurement was taken from a Quoddy Bay estimate that since has been changed.

At 1,300 feet, Quoddy Bay’s pier would extend less than one-quarter the distance from the development site at Split Rock to the opposite shore on Deer Island in New Brunswick, Smith said. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers specifies one quarter, or 25 percent, as the maximum portion of any waterway width that can be blocked off by a pier, he said.

“[The pier] will not inhibit traffic, whether it’s a small boat or a large boat, from going by,” Smith said.

According to Save Passamaquoddy Bay, such long industrial piers would not be suitable for the relatively undeveloped bay. The area’s growing tourism industry would be harmed by such development, the group indicated, and the winding approach into the bay through Canadian waters creates too many potential hazards to nearby residents.

Spokesmen for the group said LNG companies would not have first explored sites in southern Maine, where they could not drum up public support, if the bay was the best location in Maine for LNG development.

“This bay was not two years ago, is not now, and never will be the most suitable site for such operations,” Linda Godfrey, coordinator for Save Passamaquoddy Bay, said in a prepared statement.

FERC, the primary agency that reviews and decides whether to approve proposed LNG facilities, is likely to take another year to 18 months before it makes a final decision on either proposal.