A final report on the independent re-evaluation of the stalled power project on Saipan is expected to be completed within the next few days, inching closer to selecting a contractor to build the 80-megawatt plant, officials said yesterday.<\/p>\n
Burns & McDonnell, a U.S. engineering firm hired by Commonwealth Utilities Corporation to conduct another round of review on various project proposals, will submit its recommendations to the Board of Directors either this week or early next week.<\/p>\n
CUC Executive Director Timothy P. Villagomez said the board will decide whether to accept the recommendations and to award the $120 million project to the winning contractor.<\/p>\n
Since the Kansas City-based power consultant is not going to rank the companies that submitted their “best and final offers,” the CUC board will likely review the final report and reveal its choice a few weeks later.<\/p>\n
“(Burns & McDonnell is) not going to come up with ranking, they are going to evaluate the whole thing and present to the CUC board their findings, their recommendations and so forth,” Villagomez told in an interview. “The board will make the final selection.”<\/p>\n
Although the government-owned utility agency has not received preliminary findings of the independent review, the forthcoming report may be the last step in the procurement of the power project that has taken CUC more than two years now.<\/p>\n
“It’s up to the board now based on what Burns & McDonnell is going to recommend to the board, but I assume that it is going to be the last one so we can get this project going on,” the chief utility official said.<\/p>\n
Only six out of nine companies deemed qualified to bid on the power plant — touted to be the largest undertaking in the Northern Marianas ever — handed in their “best and final offers” for the second phase of independent evaluation.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
According to Villagomez, they have yet to find out the reason why the three others, ABB Energy Ventures, Daewoo and Panda, did not respond to the invitation.<\/p>\n
“They did not inform CUC, but they just advised Burns & McDonnell,” he explained, adding that by not submitting their final offers “they are not interested anymore.”<\/p>\n
While two board directors have resigned in recent weeks because they are not qualified, including former CUC chair Juan S. Dela Cruz, the executive director assured there will be a quorum to decide on the final recommendations on the project.<\/p>\n
“(The resignation) shouldn’t affect the review of the power plant. We are also going to ask the other board members to be in place too,” Villagomez pointed out, referring to two new appointees made by Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio last month.<\/p>\n
CUC is under pressure from the government to expedite resolution of the dispute lodged by Enron on an earlier decision to award the contract to Marubeni-Sithe, a deal which has delayed construction for more than a year.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A final report on the independent re-evaluation of the stalled power project on Saipan is expected to be completed within the next few days, inching closer to selecting a contractor to build the 80-megawatt plant, officials said yesterday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47221","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}