PORTLAND (AP) – An Oklahoma company that is proposing a $500 million liquefied natural gas facility in eastern Maine hopes to begin construction in 2007 and be operating as early as 2009, company officials said Tuesday.

Quoddy Bay LLC’s facility would include a half-mile long pier, storage tanks and a 40-mile pipeline to connect with an existing system to transport the gas throughout Maine and into southern New England, officials said at a press conference providing details of the plan.

It would be located at Split Rock on the southern tip of the Passamaquoddy’s Tribe’s Pleasant Point reservation on Passamaquoddy Bay.

The facility would have the capacity to supply up to 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day to the region, said Quoddy Bay LLC President Donald Smith.

“This can bring lower-cost energy for heating homes, for running businesses and for making electricity than oil imports,” he said.

Quoddy Bay is one of three companies that is proposing an LNG facility in eastern Maine.

Maine-based Calais LNG hopes to build a terminal in Calais with a capacity of 1 billion cubic feet of gas a day. Downeast LNG of Washington, D.C., said it hopes to build a terminal with a capacity of about 500,000 cubic feet of gas a day in Robbinston.

On Tuesday, Quoddy Bay officials held a press conference at the Maine State Chamber of Commerce in Augusta to provide details and a timelines for its proposal.

Quoddy Bay filed a pre-application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Friday, the first step in the federal permitting process. It intends to submit a formal permit application by next September.

Between now and then, the company will hold open houses and prepare a series of reports for FERC about the project and its impact on water resources, vegetation and wildlife, cultural resources, socioeconomics, soils, land use, and air quality, among other things. FERC will hold a series of formal sessions with area residents.

As now proposed, the project would include a pier at Split Rock where ships would be berthed to unload the natural gas, which is in a chilled liquid form when it arrives.

The facility would include equipment to turn the fuel into gas.

The project would also have a storage facility in the town of Perry, about a mile away from the pier, that would include three 160,000 cubic meter storage tanks on approximately 170 acres. Like the berthing pier, the storage facility would have equipment to convert the fuel into gas.

From there, the company would build a 40-mile pipeline to connect with an existing Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline system. The line would run from Perry to the town of Princeton.

The supply tanks would hold a total of 10 million cubic feet of natural gas, or about five days backup supply at maximum capacity, said Brian Smith, the project manager.

The company, he said, is aware of public concerns about the impacts of the project.

The impact on the environment should be minimal, and the project would use state-of-the-art equipment to assure safety, he said. The company is working closely with U.S. and Canadian officials and will be conducting an in-depth waterway analysis for LNG-carrying ships that navigate the waters off both Maine and Canada.

Dana Connors, president of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber supports construction of an LNG facility for economic development and as an energy supply source.

“Energy is such an issue that we all face today that this presents us with an opportunity that allows for a reliable clean supply of natural gas,” Connors said.

According to FERC, there are now five LNG facilities in the United States, in Everett, Mass.; Cove Point, Md.; Elba Island, Ga.; Lake Charles, La.; and Kenai, Alaska.

AP-ES-12-20-05 1542EST

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