CUC takes precautions on Hawaii trip

The Commonwealth Utilities Corporation Board has declined an invitation from Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) to visit its power plant sites in Maui and Oahu to avoid contact with its parent company HEI.

Hawaiian Electric Inc. is one of the companies competing to win the $120 million contract to build the 80-megawatt power plant on Saipan.

In a statement, CUC Executive Director Timothy P. Villagomez said the board has decided not to accept the invitation to tour the HECO plants as part of the government-owned utility firm’s efforts to educate its board directors on power plant operations.

“The Board did not want any contact, however unrelated, with a subsidiary of a company competing for the power plant project,” said the utility chief.

According to the statement, the CUC board will continue with the process of selecting a company to build and operate the new power plant during its next meeting which has yet been scheduled.

Villagomez earlier said an independent engineering firm reviewing various proposals on the long-stalled project has completed its review and the board is expected to receive soon the report on its evaluation.

Burns & McDonnell has been hired by CUC to re-evaluate the proposals submitted by six out of 13 companies deemed qualified to go through the final bidding on the power plant.

These are Enron Mariana Power, LLC; Marubeni-Sithe; Ogden Energy, Inc./PMIC; Saipan Power Partners and HEI Power Corporation; and the consortium of Alsons, Tomen, Singapore Power and Tan Holdings Corp.

The CUC Board of Directors will decide whether to accept the recommendations by the Kansas City-based engineering firm and to award the $120 million project to the winning contractor.

CUC officials hope the report would be the last step in the bidding of the power project which has taken them more than two years due to mounting protests on an earlier choice made by the board.

The utility corporation is under pressure from the government to expedite resolution of the dispute lodged by Enron against CUC’s choice to award the contract to Marubeni-Sithe, a deal which has delayed construction for more than a year.

To be operated by an independent power producer for the next 25 years, the project is designed to meet power shortages on Saipan by the end of this decade. (BS)