Perry examines LNG developer’s plan

PERRY – The town’s attorney Tuesday night outlined the details of an agreement officials have tentatively reached with an Oklahoma-based developer to build a $250 million liquefied natural gas tank farm in its backyard.

About 50 of the town’s 800 residents attended the hastily called meeting.

Quoddy Bay LNG hopes to build a facility in two communities – a terminal and receiving port in neighboring Pleasant Point and a tank farm in Perry. The project is in the federal licensing stage.

The total payment package to the town over the next 25 years is more than $90 million. The annual payment to the town would be $3.6 million.

In March, voters will decide if they want the agreement that at least two of the selectmen approved, or if they want to create a negotiating committee made up of a cross-section of residents – selectmen, fishermen and abutting land owners, among others – to hammer out a different deal with the company.

This is not the first time the town has been offered a financial package.

In November 2005, Quoddy Bay said it would pay the town $1 million, along with other perks, if it would allow the company to site an LNG terminal and tank farm in Gleason Cove just off Shore Road. The town rejected that offer.

The Board of Selectmen unveiled the financial package at its meeting Monday night.

Under the terms of the financial framework agreement, Quoddy Bay will not only pay an annual fee, but also will establish a yearly $100,000 scholarship fund for Perry children. The company also has agreed to provide a one-time payment of $1 million for school renovations and equipment, among other things.

The agreement calls for the town to establish a tax increment financing district. Perry voters will be asked to vote on the TIF district at a later date. If a TIF district is not approved by Perry voters, Quoddy Bay would pay only the normal property taxes generated by the project.

During his presentation, town attorney Eric Stumpfel addressed the boom-and-bust nature of the energy market. He talked about Dominion Cove Point LNG in Cove Point, Md., which had a rocky start after the bottom dropped out of the energy market. “It originally was a 1 billion cubic feet per day LNG terminal facility,” he said. The site was completed in 1978 and shipments of LNG were received until 1980.

“In 1980 and 1981, the energy market reversed and all those fuel prices that were going up, went down,” he said. “They could not make a profit receiving LNG shipments.” The facility remained closed until 1995, when it was reopened as a storage unit. The site did not begin to receive LNG until 2003. “They recently filed [with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] and obtained approval for expansion that will double the size to a 2 billion cubic feet per day facility, about the size of what Quoddy Bay is proposing,” he said.

Asked after the meeting what would happen if the bottom dropped out of the energy market again and Quoddy Bay couldn’t make its $3.6 million payment to the town, Stumpfel said, “That’s going to be part of the discussion of how to lock that in.”

If Quoddy Bay did default, Stumpfel said, one option would be to place a lien on the property. “All of that will need to be discussed and worked out and brought back to the town in a final agreement,” Stumpfel said.

There are ways to guarantee payment, including an escrow account, payment bonds or letters of credit. “There are many ways to assure performance and there are issues with each of those,” he said. “The commitment here is there will be a legally enforceable assurance that money will be paid every year for 25 years, regardless.”

Before the meeting, Chairman David Turner also addressed the nonpayment issue. “We’d go through the lien process and we’d own some tanks and try to find somebody to lease them out to,” he said. Asked what the town would do with a tank farm, Turner chuckled and said, “Maybe we can have an aquarium?”

One of the issues raised was the possibility of a zero property tax rate.

“Zero mill rate is absolutely your choice,” Quoddy Bay project manager Brian Smith said. “You can have a $10 mill rate if you want. You can have a zero mill rate and still get $3.6 million dollars from us, plus $1 million for the school and $100,000 for scholarships.”

Smith then addressed the issue of the worker village it plans to build to house workers brought into the area from out-of-state. The project manager assured those at the meeting that the village would not include families and children.

Perry resident Bill Love questioned officials about the impact on the town if there was a major influx of people in search of cheap property taxes. “We need an analysis of what that is going to do to us,” Love said.

“I agree with the point,” Stumpfel said. He said there were planning tools in the state to project future growth, but added it was not something his law firm did.