CUC parts delayed

Gov. Juan N. Babauta’s promise to end rolling blackouts by Sept. 6 may not materialize, if further delays occur in the delivery of anchor bolts for a broken engine at Power Plant 1 in Lower Base.

An official of Man B&W Diesel Singapore, which is working with Commonwealth Utilities Corp. personnel to fix Engine No. 8, reported that the vessel carrying the necessary parts for the engine repair would be arriving at least four days late.

V-Grow Shipping Pte. Ltd., a shipping company based in Singapore, has revised the estimated arrival time of its ship, Kyowa Salvia 29, from Aug. 25 to Aug. 29, today.

In an Aug. 25 letter to Man B&W project manager Ivo Post, the shipping company explained that the typhoon around the region forced the ship to stay for three days at the Busan port in Korea. When the boat finally started sailing to Saipan, it met rough seas and therefore would be delayed by another two days.

V-Grow said the vessel’s owner only informed the shipping line on Aug. 25 about the delayed arrival on Saipan.

Post, however, maintained that Man B&W was given misleading information about the delivery. The shipping line informed Man B&W that the vessel departed Busan on Aug. 16, with only one-day delay, he said.

He added that his company had been checking the shipping schedule every day, and it advised all the time of an estimated time of arrival of Aug. 24.

Furthermore, he pointed out that bad weather condition did not justify a four-day delay in the arrival of the ship.

“Having been a sailor on ocean-going vessels myself and met plenty of rough seas, I never experienced such strong winds that a one-day journey was delayed by at least four days!” he said in a letter faxed to CUC’s Procurement Division, the Governor’s Office, CUC management, and the V-Grow, among other recipients.

“With the new vessel [estimated to arrive on] Saipan Aug. 29th, 2005, we can expect the material to reach the power plant on Aug. 30, 2005. As such, our ‘advance days’ would have been wasted and we are nearly thrown back to the initial schedule,” he said. “To CUC/government [officials] reading this: any further delay of arrival of goods will affect the promised completion day of Engine #8 [on] Sept. 6, 2005.”

Babauta had promised Thursday last week that CUC will end load shedding on Sept. 6, in anticipation of the completion of repair work on Engine No. 8.

The utility firm started load shedding on July 28, 2005 due to under-generation. As a result, affected Saipan villages have been experiencing at least two hours of power outages a day.

CUC currently generates only 60 megawatts of power a day. This is 8 megawatts short of the demand during peak hours. However, this problem would be solved if Engine No. 8 is brought back online on Sept. 6 and starts providing an additional 10.5 megawatts to CUC’s current capacity.