The Commonwealth Ports Authority is weighing whether to issue a request for proposals or to accept the request of Mobil Oil Mariana Islands Inc. to extend its expiring 40-year lease of CPA\u2019s property at the Francisco C. Ada\/Saipan International Airport.<\/p>\n
Mobil\u2019s 40-year lease will expire in September next year and is asking for an extension of its current lease, or a new lease. That doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that Mobil is requesting for a new 40-year lease at once. Barrie C. Toves, the CPA board\u2019s Airport Facilities Committee chairman, said that CPA normally signs a lease for 15 years, with options for five-year extensions that add up to 40 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut no more than 40 years, capped by CPA\u2019s enabling [law],\u201d Toves said.<\/p>\n
In an interview last week, Toves said they had indicated in their meeting agenda last Thursday to continue discussions about the lease because Mobil came with a representative to speak to the committee during last month\u2019s committee meeting. <\/p>\n
Toves said Mobil had a PowerPoint presentation explaining how they started out on Saipan and then building the infrastructure at the Saipan airport to provide aviation fuel to the airlines. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey are getting close to closing out their 40-year limit on the term of the lease and they\u2019re requesting for CPA\u2019s consideration to extend the lease,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
During that meeting, Toves said, they made it very clear that a law actually prohibits CPA from extending new leases when it expires after 40 years.<\/p>\n
Toves said they asked the CPA management to go back to the drawing board and see how they can address this because Mobil has invested a lot of money and provided service to the aviation industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are planning to\u2026make some more improvement on their\u2026facilities,\u201d Toves said.<\/p>\n
He said Mobil could also responding if CPA decides to do an RFP. <\/p>\n
Toves said his committee is cautious about entertaining requests for the renewal of the lease when they expire after 40 years. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to be in violation of our own statute,\u201d he said, explaining that they asked their legal counsel and their executive director, Christopher S. Tenorio, to look into the issue and see how to entertain Mobil\u2019s request.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf not and if we are required to pursue an RFP, that would be the route that we would turn,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Toves said Mobil has told CPA of its plan to expand its facilities but, in order for them to do that, they want to secure an extension of their current lease, or acquire a new lease. He said Mobil has active contracts with the airline industry so they want to \u201cput the [pieces of the] puzzle together.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem there is that our hands are tied when it comes to the prohibition clause of the enabling act for the 40-year limit,\u201d Toves said.<\/p>\n
He said they want to retain the issue at the committee level for further discussion and they want their legal counsel to discuss it with them during an executive session because there are also some sensitive matters that he cannot disclose at this moment.<\/p>\n
Toves said CPA\u2019s normal practice is, if they RFP out a certain lease, the first option would be for 15 years. After 15 years, there could be many increments of five-year extensions, or sometimes it could be 10-year extensions up to the maximum 40 years.<\/p>\n
Toves said they will probably be entertaining Mobil\u2019s request were it not for the Enabling Act that prohibit CPA from going past 40 years. \u201cBut we need to clarify this matter with our legal counsel during the board meeting and, from there, we will decide whether to entertain the request for a new lease, or we will go back to the drawing board and do an RFP,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When the lease expires, Mobil will have to pack up and remove those infrastructures in their facilities and that\u2019s something that CPA is concerned about, Toves said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to interrupt their supply of aviation fuel. So that could be something that we can continue to talk about,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Commonwealth Ports Authority is weighing whether to issue a request for proposals or to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[124],"class_list":["post-319543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-cpa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}