Last night, you heard the chairman and the electricity director from
the Public Utilities Commission lay into BEL. He said the utility
refused to follow the regulator's lead into a power purchase agreement
with Santander - which makes electricity form the sugar by product.
Tonight, we have a response from BEL, but first here's how the PUC
characterised what sounded like stubborn-ness on BEL's part:
John Avery - Chairman, PUC
"We're also announcing our intention to make an order section 23 of the
electricity act to ensure that BEL complies with the condition 17 of its
license. Again, we believe that the position of BEL in this regard is kind
of unreasonable, BEL's reason that they give for not entering into the
agreement and not complying with condition 17 is that the agreement does
not provide compensation for any obligations undertaken by BEL. We believe
this is very unreasonable for a PPA."
Ambrose Tiller - Director of Electricity, PUC
"BEL can't do whatever it wants, BEL must operate within a restrictive
environment where it operates in a rule that is prescribed in the public
interest. BEL tries to make same argument you make, we are private people,
santander private, the activity we have together is private, no! You are
private actors but the activity you perform is in the public interest and
it must be under a rule prescribed by us and BEL is aware of that but they
are just playing a game and I think with the new management at BEL, my own
view on the matter is, they intend - because this is not only SSCL, it's
not only the FTRP, the issue with other issues we're having. They intend
from what I am seeing to get away from being in a restrictive environment,
they don't want to be under the jurisdiction where rules prescribed in the
public interest need to abide by, they want to always operate in their own
private commercial interest, that is the way it looks to us. BEL is intent
on removing being in a restrictive environment, they don't want to operate
under public interest rules, that is how you can't help but see it because
this is not only this year, everything we operate with BEL, they don't want
to be restrictive under rules prescribed by the public interest. They
simply want things that are in their commercial interest."
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