The next Keystone? Natural gas project draws environmentalist ire

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

A liquefied natural gas facility in southern Maryland is generating intense criticism from environmental groups, in a fight that echoes the protracted battle over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

 

Energy company Dominion Resources is hoping to invest up to $3.8 billion to upgrade the Cove Point LNG facility as an export terminal.

 

If successful, it could become the East Coast's chief LNG export facility, sending billions of cubic feet of natural gas to Japan, India, and elsewhere.

 

Dominion stresses that the project would have a huge economic impact close to home as well.

 

"The local area of Calvert County gets a huge benefit: $40 million dollars in additional taxes, property taxes, and the whole area of Maryland gets a benefit as well ... not to mention the U.S., from an export perspective," Mike Frederick, Dominion's VP of liquefied natural gas operations, told Fox News in an interview.

 

The Department of Energy has given Dominion conditional permission to export gas. The company is awaiting an environmental assessment from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), due May 15.

 

As with the proposed Canada-to-Texas Keystone oil pipeline, organized labor is on board with the LNG project, wanting the roughly 3,000 jobs it is projected to create during construction.

 

But some environmental groups are fighting it, complaining it's being oversold.

 

"Everybody in the U.S. economy will suffer from gas exports according to the U.S. Department of Energy, except for one industry -- and that's the gas industry, which will make lots and lots of money," Chesapeake Climate Action Network's Mike Tidwell told Fox News in an interview.

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Local opposition to economic improvement.