Previous Story
No $500,000 yet but load shedding not imminent—CUC
|
Posted on Dec 27 2005
The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. did not get yesterday the additional $500,000 that the CNMI government had reportedly promised, but the utility firm assured that no imminent power load shedding would be implemented in the coming days.
Communications between the beleaguered utility firm and the CNMI government continues, with acting CUC executive director Sohale Samari disclosing that he spoke with Gov. Juan N. Babauta yesterday.
“Everything looks good. The payments are still on track,” Samari said. “Power is still on.”
Last week, Samari said there might be a “major development” supposedly yesterday or today regarding the CNMI’s power situation. He has yet to disclose what that development might be.
The CUC had to scramble for funds as Saipan’s power plants were running out of fuel last week. The CUC resorted to power load shedding on Tuesday and Wednesday last week to cope with the emergency situation. The rolling blackouts temporarily stopped when the Finance Department remitted a total of $1 million in fuel cost subsidy to the CUC.
Besides that amount, the CNMI government had earlier pledged to give the CUC another $500,000 this week and $1 million more next week. However, Samari had said that there has been no clear-cut assurance that the additional $1 million would actually be given next week.
CUC’s power generation for Saipan, Tinian and Rota costs approximately $179,000 daily, according to Samari. On Saipan, Power Plant 1 and 4 consumes an average of 70,000 gallons and 14,000 gallons of fuel, respectively, at a cost of $1.75 per gallon. The daily consumption results in a daily fuel cost of $147,000.
Samari said Tinian’s daily fuel consumption averages 12,000 gallons, while that on Rota reaches 4,000 gallons. At the rate of $2 per gallon, CUC’s daily fuel consumption for the two islands’ power plants costs $32,000.
Samari said that the CUC’s monthly collections have been hovering around $6 million since the implementation of the fuel surcharge.
