Lubmin (dpa/mv) - Criticism of the type of public participation in the approval of a planned terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Lubmin is growing. The German Nature Conservation Union (Nabu) also criticized on Friday that documents are not available digitally for 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.
This way of interpreting the approximately 1,000 printed pages during the very limited working hours of only five working days is unacceptable and contradicts the applicable law, according to a statement from the Nabu regional association. The German Environmental Aid (DUH) made a similar statement earlier this week. Even if it is a project that is prioritized according to the regulations of the LNG Acceleration Act (LNGG), sufficient public participation must be ensured, Nabu demanded. The conservationists demanded that the documents be made available digitally for a reasonable period of time.
The state government had rejected criticism that they wanted to wave the project through as quickly as possible. A spokesman for the Schwerin Ministry of the Environment said on request that there could be no question of this. Environment Minister Till Backhaus (SPD) has repeatedly repeated since the beginning of planning that it was absolutely important to him to carry out the process in a legally secure manner.
The initiators had also rejected the criticism and referred to security reasons. According to Stephan Knabe, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Regas, it is easier to understand who is looking at the documents if they are presented in paper form. 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 company plans to land LNG delivered by ship in Lubmin as early as December and help replace Russian pipeline gas as one of several LNG projects in Germany. The abbreviation LNG stands for Liquefied Natural Gas.
