BANGOR, Maine — If Maine’s largest employers and companies are going to thrive, the state needs to increase its supply of natural gas, according to utility and business officials who attended a Tuesday event focusing on how energy issues are holding back Maine’s economy.
The Action Committee of 50 hosted a panel discussion at the University of Maine at Augusta’s Bangor campus stressing the need for boosted natural gas capacity in Maine. Speakers were Mark Vannoy, chairman of the Maine Public Utilities Commission; Greg Crisp, director of business development for Spectra Energy; and Keith Van Scotter, president of Lincoln Paper and Tissue. The Action Committee of 50 is a nonprofit economic development corporation geared toward improving trade and logistics in Maine as a way of attracting and retaining jobs in the region.
The natural gas shortage has been a frequent refrain for Gov. Paul LePage and his energy staffers, who have said Maine businesses will continue to suffer if they don’t have more access to natural gas and affordable, stable electricity and heating prices in the near future.
Bangor Natural Gas sponsored Tuesday’s event.
Vannoy pointed to a recent news release warning Mainers that the price of electricity would nearly double for consumers this winter. Those prices, not only for electricity but also heating, put Maine businesses at a severe competitive disadvantage when compared to other areas of the country.
“This is not the kind of press release that anybody wants to put out because it’s going to affect our businesses,” Vannoy said. “We can mitigate this problem through improved natural gas transportation.”
Vannoy said that electricity prices will become increasingly dependent on natural gas supply, as more electric production facilities are expected to use that as their means of generation. In New England, an estimated 4,000 megawatts in energy production capacity will be lost as coal and oil plants “retire,” he said.
A series of projects totaling 5,000 megawatts in generation capacity are expected to replace those shuttering coal and oil operations. About 55 percent of those projects are natural-gas fired plants. Most others are wind energy.
Some relief is in the works, according to Crisp. Spectra Energy, which oversees about 19,000 miles of pipeline in the United States and Canada, has three projects in various stages of planning and approval that are projected to bring natural gas prices more in line with places such as New York and the Ohio River Valley.
Crisp said there’s a “supply bubble” for natural gas in New York. Gas supply there often exceeds demand and “gas that comes in has literally no place to go most of the year,” he said. Without an improved pipeline system, there’s no reliable way of getting in-demand excess elsewhere.
The first effort, the Algonquin Incremental Market project, will expand the existing Algonquin Gas Transmission system to bring more natural gas supply to markets in the Northeast. That will result in a 30 percent increase in pipeline capacity, according to Crisp. The Algonquin line runs gas from New Jersey — where a gas line from Texas ends — to Boston. That project is expected to wrap up in November 2016.
The second expansion, The Atlantic Bridge Project, is more specific to Maine. It will allow the Algonquin line to connect with the Maritimes Northeast pipeline, which runs through Maine and into the Canadian Maritimes. That will result in a more than 50 percent capacity increase in Maine, according to Crisp. That’s scheduled for completion sometime in 2017.
“After this, I think we’ll start to see some real ease to the disparity in natural gas prices between Maine and the rest of the country,” Crisp said.
A third project, Access Northeast, will be focused around spreading lines to reach the growing number of natural-gas run electric generation facilities in the region. That’s expected to come into service in 2018. That could bring down electricity costs throughout the region.
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter at @nmccrea213.