Three top bidders on the long-delayed power project on Saipan will have the chance to win the $120 million contract as the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation starts its negotiations with each of them after today’s highly anticipated board decision.<\/p>\n
Six board directors of the government-owned utility corporation are expected to voice their votes on the fate of the proposed 80-megawatt power plant — a move that will bring the project to its next phase almost three years since its procurement began.<\/p>\n
The board is likely to “temporarily” award the lucrative contract to three highest-ranking proposers: Enron, the Tomen Consortium and the Saipan Power Partners\/Hawaiian Electric Inc., according to a source privy to the current discussion.<\/p>\n
They will then begin separate negotiations with each of the three firms to get the best offer in terms of price and overall capability to handle the project — touted to be the largest deal ever in CNMI’s history.<\/p>\n
To be installed through the build-operate-transfer scheme under a 24-year independent agreement, the new plant is designed to meet projected increase in power demand on Saipan.
\nEnron, Tomen and SPP\/HEI emerged top scorers in an independent evaluation conducted by power consultants from Burns & McDonnell, who were hired by CUC in January 1999 after a tumultuous in-house selection process.<\/p>\n
Dogged by protests since June 1998 when the board awarded the contract to Marubeni-Sithe, the project drew attention of the Legislature in October last year following the board’s decision to pick a contractor pending re-assessment of the island’s power load requirement.<\/p>\n
That led to collapse of the initial request for proposal which was initiated by former board chair Rosario M. Elameto, who was ousted in a surprise election last March; and the passage of the law sponsored by Senate Floor Leader Pete P. Reyes which forced CUC to stick with the 80-MW project.<\/p>\n
Today’s board action, which is a continuation of a May 18 meeting, barely beats the deadline imposed by a recently enacted law which reinstated the original plan to have the 80-MW plant built, instead of the 60-MW capacity approved by majority of the board members last January.<\/p>\n
Under Public Law 12-1 signed by Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio last April 3, CUC has 60 days to award the contract. That grace period expires on June 3.<\/p>\n
The board last week postponed its decision on the project during its meeting on Rota pending the hiring of a private legal counsel to replace its current lawyer, Assistant Attorney General Bill Ohle who has resigned effective June 15.<\/p>\n
CUC received only one proposal under its 15-day emergency procurement that ended May 13 and sources said it came from Steve Woodruff, the Senate legal counsel. The report could not be independently confirmed.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Board Chair Jesus T. Guerrero has said they are weighing other options on how to deal with the departure of its present legal counsel as he stressed that having a legal adviser is integral in its handling of the power project.<\/p>\n
One option is to request a replacement from the Attorney General’s Office and the other is to hire the lone legal service bidder. A final decision is expected to be made today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three top bidders on the long-delayed power project on Saipan will have the chance to win the $120 million contract as the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation starts its negotiations with each of them after today’s highly anticipated board decision.<\/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-51747","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\/51747","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=51747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}