OUR ready to give green light for EWI licence

Albert Gordon, director general of the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), will today meet with the Energy Monitoring Committee (EMC) to provide information which has led him to declare that he would be recommending to Energy Minister Phillip Paulwell that a licence be issued to Energy World International (EWI) to operate a 360-megawatt plant locally.

"Up to the last time we met, the information we had, there was quite a bit outstanding," Dr Carlton Davis, co-chair of the EMC, said. "He obviously now feels that he is in a position to make a recommendation."

Gordon said yesterday that the OUR was having some final discussions and it should soon make the recommendation for EWI to be granted a licence.

"We are hoping to make a recommendation in a another few days … . We are looking at by the end of this week," Gordon said on Nationwide yesterday morning.

The OUR had delayed recommending that the licence be granted while it awaited information from EWI that it had the financial muscle to fund the project.

COMMITMENT RECEIVED

Gordon said while the OUR was yet to receive the information from EWI, the regulatory agency was now satisfied, based on a commitment it has received from Energy World Corporation, the parent company.

Once the licence is granted to EWI, the company will have 10 days to pay US$37 million as a performance bond or risk losing the US$7 million that it posted as a bid bond.

EWI will also have 30 days after the granting of the licence to provide the OUR with a fuel source plan and a further 10 days to indicate the price.

The Hong Kong-based EWI has been selected as the preferred bidder in the baseload-generating capacity project, which is a central plank in the push to reduce Jamaica's energy cost.

The company says it will cost US$737 million to execute the project for the supply of baseload-generating capacity on a build, own and operate basis.