‘Series of blackouts’ for Christmas

Guyanese should expect “a series of blackouts for the Christmas season,” owing to deteriorating finances at the power company, escalating prices in fuel and the power company’s failure to bring this to the attention of the government, the President said yesterday.

In the interim, to ease the situation, the government is seeking to bring a generating set out of the Bahamas but “that is going to be tight”, President Bharrat Jagdeo said.

Informing the media about the situation at a press conference he held in the Credentials Room at the Office of the President yesterday, the President said the situation was as a result of what appeared to be a “total breakdown in communication and planning” by the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Company and the Guyana Energy Authority (GEA).

He said that in July 2005, when there was a 12% increase in electricity rates, fuel was US$33.50 per barrel and the current price is now US$98 per barrel. “The finances of the company have been deteriorating. They knew this some time ago and they did not bring this to the attention of the government,” he said.

The GEA’s blunder, he said was in not making adequate arrangements for heavy oil. “They did not advise the minister [Prime Minister Sam Hinds has the portfolio for public utilities] on a switch from GUYOIL importing heavy oil for them from a particular source, to GPL importing its own heavy fuel from a different source.”

In addition, he said, the GEA and GPL did not advise that the switch could not be effected in a short period of time because there was need for transitional arrangements. “Because of that GPL suffered some huge losses because it had to use more expensive fuel to keep the generators going. They had to use diesel rather than heavy oil.”

He said that a few weeks ago the government got involved and he asked to see the then chairman of the GPL Board of Directors Ronald Alli and the then head of the GEA Joseph O’Lall at Cabinet.

He said he was told that the GPL had a total liability of $800 million, but this turned out to be over $2 billion in accumulated liabilities. “They were deferring maintenance because the cash flow could not support their liabilities and their costs. Things like maintenance suffered. A lot of the sets in Berbice were not maintained. That is why today we see so much failure.”

The plans for the Christmas season were hinged on the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO) cogeneration of power being able to feed into the national grid by this month and which would have provided stable power to the Berbice area.

Before the Cabinet retreat in Berbice, Jagdeo said, he had been told that the cogeneration would have been on stream by November 30. When he got to Berbice, he said, he was told that it would be by mid-December. The hope is that once Skeldon could provide stable power to Berbice, the generating sets being used there could be shifted to Georgetown to meet the demands of the Christmas season.

Unfortunately, Jagdeo said, because of then shifting of the deadlines, he was not optimistic about this happening though he hoped it could.

Had the government known about the situation before, he said, it might have been able to deal with it by renting emergency sets.

As it stands, the situation in the Demerara grid is going to be “very, very tight,” he said. Knowing that there would be thousands of Guyanese, who would have returned home for the Christmas, experiencing a series of blackouts, “is disgusting,” he declared adding that there was no use in keeping people in the dark on the issue.

Promising to keep citizens updated, he said he was still looking at how the GPL could clear its liabilities.

He noted that the stealing of electricity was still a huge problem while the cost of importing fuel was now more than the total revenue GPL earns from providing its service. (Miranda La Rose)