CUC pressed to decide on Saipan power project

The Commonwealth Utilities Corporation must decide immediately on the fate of the stalled Saipan power project in order to prevent serious outages in the future, a legislator said yesterday.

Rep. Melvin O. Faisao joined calls for CUC Board to expedite its review of the findings made by independent experts ranking competing companies higher than Marubeni-Sithe, which won the $120 million contract during an in-house selection process.

He said the government-owned utility corporation should not wait for another 90 days to finalize its decision, noting that Burns & McDonnell has already determined the best offers to build the 80-megawatt power plant.

“What is CUC doing? Wasting the money?” Faisao asked. “The public is anxious to find out what will be the fate of the project because they will be the ones to suffer when there is power outage.”

The utility board agreed two weeks ago to hold off action on the results from the independent re-evaluation conducted by the Kansas City-based engineering firm for the last nine months to give CUC directors time to review the project.

CUC also hinted at scaling back the plant to less than 80 MW as initially proposed in light of the downturn in the economy which has reduced demand for electricity.

At present, the utility corporation has peak capacity of 65 megawatts on Saipan and to prevent outages, it has worked out an agreement with large consumers, such as hotels and factories, to switch to their generators when demand increases or when existing plants malfunction.

But Faisao said if it will recommend downsizing the plant, the board should better decide now so as not to keep the public in the dark regarding the status of the project.

“CUC must put its act together. Stop the procrastination because the public will suffer in the end,” he added.

Faisao’s call came on the heels of the request from Senate Floor Leader Pete P. Reyes to speed up resolution of the dispute which has stalled its construction for more than a year.

CUC has come under fire in recent months over its choice of Japan’s Marubeni Corp. and its U.S. partner Sithe Energies, Inc., prompting it to hire Burns & McDonnell early this year to undertake a fresh round of evaluation on all offers from 13 companies.