Lubmin (dpa/mv) - The German Environmental Aid (DUH) has criticized the approval process for a terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) planned in Lubmin, Western Pomerania, as not being transparent. In a statement on Tuesday, the environmentalists complain that the application documents are not available digitally for public inspection. Instead, the documents can be viewed from Tuesday up to and including next Monday in the State Office for Agriculture and the Environment (Stalu) in Stralsund and in the Lubmin office.
One assumes numerous documents, wrote Constantin Zerger from the DUH on request. "Only being able to look through these documents physically on site is pure harassment." In the case of digital documents, one could split up the review and simply call in external expertise. Zerger called the chosen procedure a "deliberate sabotage of public participation".
The initiators of the planned terminal rejected the criticism. It's not about making it more difficult for environmental organizations to participate, for example, said Stephan Knabe, head of the Deutsche Regas supervisory board of the German Press Agency. "We have nothing to hide." Rather, it is a security measure.
It is easier to understand who is looking at the documents. This would not be the case if everyone could download the documents online. The hurdles to misuse of the planning documents would then be much lower. Security advisors and lawyers had advised to do so after the alleged attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea and the railway infrastructure.
The DUH spoke of a procedural error, which is why legal action is reserved. The organization also pointed out that all planning documents for all LNG projects in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein had also been published digitally. Knabe said that the situation has changed fundamentally with the attacks on critical infrastructure in recent months. In addition, the security situation in the Baltic Sea is different.
Deutsche Regas plans to land ship-delivered LNG in Lubmin from December and help replace Russian pipeline gas as one of several planned LNG projects in Germany.
