Having served in the Maine Legislature with Rep. Mike Perkins, I have a lot of respect for him, but his recent column, “Corridor could have helped with high electricity prices” was way off base and merits a response.

Right out of the gate, Perkins claims that we’re “stuck with paying high rates to out-of-state and foreign companies” because Maine voters resoundingly rejected the CMP Corridor project. The two companies involved in the CMP Corridor project are CMP, a Spanish-based company owned 8% by the not-so-friendly government of Qatar, and Hydro-Quebec, a Crown Corp. owned 100% by a foreign government. The CMP Corridor would make Maine, and more significantly Massachusetts, reliant on a foreign government to provide power transmitted on lines owned by a foreign-based corporation.

Ownership of assets aside, the current rate hikes are by no means related to the construction of the CMP Corridor, nor would the increases have been alleviated by this project. For one thing, a project in the construction phase has no impact on current supply/demand issues. But more importantly, Maine would just be a pass-through state in this scenario: 95% of the power would be destined for Massachusetts, and 5% of the power, worth a savings of just 12 cents per month per Mainer, coming to Maine. We would hardly notice our $1.44/year energy savings from the CMP Corridor project, but we would likely notice the destruction of an area that is precious to our state and the hundreds of jobs lost in critical industries.

Massachusetts is perfectly happy asking Mainers to live at the foot of high-impact transmission lines to meet its goals even though it rejected our efforts to expand the existing natural gas pipeline in its state that connects Maine to domestic suppliers as close as Pennsylvania. Just this week, the Maine Chamber of Commerce CEO came out and said that expanding natural gas pipeline capacity “is key to cutting Maine energy costs.” PUC Chairman Philip Bartlett says that a main driver behind increased electricity prices is because, when it comes to natural gas, you can’t get here from there.

Because of the bottleneck in Massachusetts, Maine is cut off from domestic natural gas supplies and must instead rely on LNG from overseas which can be volatile at times, leaving us susceptible to higher costs and large fluctuations in supply.

If Massachusetts had treated us as a partner rather than a colony, I am a firm believer that we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re faced with today. If they want us to serve as their power cord, they should have offered a fair deal with real benefits, including the expansion of the natural gas pipeline.

Tom Saviello lives in Wilton.