After a meeting with administration officials, Commonwealth Utilities Corp. acting executive director Tony Guerrero expressed optimism that the government would give the utility firm today the needed $2 million so it could buy some 1.1 million gallons of fuel, which would support power generation for the next two to three weeks.<\/p>\n
Mobil\u2019s scheduled fuel delivery tomorrow will temporarily stop the uncertainty about CUC\u2019s ability to provide uninterrupted power on the islands\u2014at least for a few weeks.<\/p>\n
Since the week before Christmas until this week, CUC had to scramble for government subsidy as the three installments of $500,000 given by the government in the past two weeks could only purchase fuel that would sustain power generation for a few days. The subsidies, however, averted rolling blackouts that had been initially implemented on Dec. 20 and 21.<\/p>\n
Guerrero said he expects the government to provide CUC the money to pay for the fuel delivery this afternoon. Guerrero said CUC needs to pay Mobil $2 million to ensure the fuel delivery, as Mobil\u2019s fuel tanker will arrive on Saipan from Singapore tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Guerrero said he and CUC board chair Frank Guerrero met yesterday with Gov. Juan N. Babauta, Lt. Gov. Diego T. Benavente and Finance Secretary Fermin Atalig about the needed money to ensure the tanker\u2019s delivery of fuel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are committed to assisting the CUC tomorrow [today] in the amount of $2 million,\u201d the executive director said after the meeting yesterday.<\/p>\n
The approximately 1.1 million gallons of fuel to be delivered by Mobil could sustain CUC\u2019s power generation for the islands for 18 to 20 days, Guerrero said.<\/p>\n
Although he earlier said that fuel supply at Saipan\u2019s power plants would last until yesterday only, Guerrero added that the fuel stock could last until CUC receives the fuel delivery tomorrow.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the moment, we are [running] short [of fuel]. We really need the fuel delivery,\u201d Guerrero said.<\/p>\n
The CUC has been suffering from a cash flow problem, despite its average monthly collection of $6 million. The monthly collections include fuel surcharge on top of the cost of customers\u2019 power consumption.<\/p>\n
CUC\u2019s power generation for Saipan, Tinian and Rota costs approximately $179,000 daily. On Saipan, CUC\u2019s two operational power plants consume an average of 84,000 gallons at a cost of $1.75 per gallon, resulting in a daily consumption of $147,000.<\/p>\n
Tinian\u2019s daily fuel consumption averages 12,000 gallons, while that on Rota reaches 4,000 gallons. At the rate of $2 per gallon, CUC\u2019s daily fuel consumption for the two islands\u2019 power plants costs $32,000.<\/p>\n
The transition committee for CUC has yet to come up with recommendations to the incoming administration of Gov.-elect Benigno Fitial on how to solve the power crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After a meeting with administration officials, Commonwealth Utilities Corp. acting executive director Tony Guerrero expressed optimism that the government would give the utility firm today the needed $2 million so it could buy some 1.1 million gallons of fuel, which would support power generation for the next two to three weeks.<\/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-96855","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\/96855","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=96855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}