Re: 'Due diligence' Energy World Int'l Pacific LNG

THE EDITOR, Sir:

Open letter to our Director General

Dear Mr Gordon, on October 4, 2013 the Office of Utilities Regula-tion (OUR) issued a statement under the heading 'OUR moves to next ranked bidder to provide base-load capacity to national grid'. In the statement, the OUR indicated that it "will now inform the next ranked entity, Energy World International/Pacific LNG, that it has fifteen (15) days as of October 4, 2013 to provide its bid bond".

We are aware that the bond has been provided. However, your office also indicated that the "conclusion of a formal arrangement with Energy World International (EWI) is conditional on the completion of due diligence on the company and its principals by the Financial Investigative Division (FID)".

It is now three months and one week since this indication.

As you are aware, Jamaica's national interest, and the concern of every business and each householder currently burdened with enormous electricity bills as well as energy cost, is to ensure that the financial and technical capacity of EWI to provide base-load capacity to the national grid is beyond question..

informing the public

It is, therefore, of the highest priority that the public be kept informed in the most transparent manner of the process and the conclusions of the due diligence to which your October 4 statement referred.

I am therefore asking you:

To indicate the status of the due diligence process.

To confirm whether any entity, other than the FID, was contracted to carry out aspects of due diligence, and if so, which.

To make available to the public any interim or final report that the OUR may have received.

This information becomes even more important and urgent in the context of a public announcement that the Jamaica Public Service is entering into a partnership with EWI "to acquire a stake in the 360- megawatt power plant that the firm, Energy World International, has the right to develop and build," Gleaner Editorial January 13, 2014.

If, indeed, EWI has been accorded that 'right', it is absolutely unacceptable that the Jamaican people be kept in the dark as to EWI's capacity - technical and financial - to deliver the reduced energy cost which it promised and which we so urgently need.

If they can deliver - fine. Conversely, if the due diligence casts any doubt on EWI's capacity, our people need to know now and not discover two or three years down the road that the promised reduction in energy costs was a pipe-dream that might have been avoided.

Mr Director General, I am, therefore, urging that any due diligence report, interim or otherwise, be made available to the people of Jamaica. We have suffered for too long from backdoor, behind-closed-door deals. Let this not be another such!

Trevor Munroe

(Professor)

Executive Director

National Integrity Action