By Youri Kemp From Caribbean News Now

NASSAU, Bahamas — While the “unholy mess” appears to be subsiding at the Bahamas Power and Light (BPL) after the entire board was terminated, including the chairman, with some of those same board members being almost immediately re-engaged except the chairman and a new board put in place, the company is heavily engaged with Shell Energy North America (SENA) on several different fronts.

SENA was engaged by BPL in April 2018 in relation to a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project as well as a contract to build a new power plant for BPL, which was approved to go to SENA.

However, lack of progress on the contract to build the new power plant, with the previous board reportedly being at “loggerheads” over the issue, has been cited as the primary reason why minister for works, Desmond Bannister, terminated the entire board pursuant to his authority to do so under The Electricity Act 2015.

However, former BPL chairman, Darnell Osborne, claimed that allegations of stalling on the SENA contract were misleading and, in a release to the media on August 23, said: “Cabinet approved the award of the contract for new generation to Shell NA. As members of the Technical Committee, Directors Heastie and Rollins were tasked to arrange for the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to be presented to the board.”

After some delay, because BPL’s law firm did not have a legal representative in place to review the documents, Osborne noted that a few days after a hold was placed on the documents being approved by the board, Bannister issued a directive to her to sign the MOU by end of the same day, to which Osborne then responded that all of the directors’ concerns and some other legal issues had not been settled and the document was not ready.

Following the installation of the new BPL board, Bannister insisted that the SENA proposal will move forward. Some two days prior, new chairman, Dr Donovan Moxey, said that the new board will review the process under which SENA was agreed to be the preferred bidder under the previous board.

Notwithstanding Bannister’s assurance, sources close to the matter remain sceptical of the SENA deal moving forward. However, SENA has not weighed in on the recent changes at BPL and the LNG agreement is said to be set in stone and progressing regardless of the new plant initiative currently on the table.

While the construction of a new plant for BPL is the big chunk of meat in the pot, other ancillary scopes of work, for example transportation for construction, construction partners, temporary power supply and backup power supply in the event BPL goes offline during the transition, is still separate and apart from the main SENA/BPL proposal.

BPL’s new board is comprised of chairman, Dr Donovan Moxey; deputy chairman, Stephen Holowesko; James Moss; Debra Wood; (a former board member who was terminated but brought back); Ferron Bethell; and Viana Gardiner.

Moxey, the new BPL chairman, was immediately involved in his own controversy, when it was discovered that his technology firm had been unsuccessfully lobbying BPL to install and use a payment app, but was not approved.

Moxey claimed in an interview that he does not see his lobbying for the app to be used by BPL, then or now, to be an issue as he is still working diligently on getting his payment app approved by the Central Bank of The Bahamas for countrywide use and not just for use at BPL.

Moxey stated that “it is not an issue unless you make it an issue”, to which Bannister responded a day later, saying that that Moxey’s payment app is not under consideration, leading to the assumption that the conflict of interest is clear and present since the Electricity Act 2015 prohibits vendors serving as board directors.

There is also a linkage between new BPL deputy chairman, Stephen Holowesko, and another company that was bidding on works at BPL, New Fortress Energy – a subsidiary of New Fortress Investment Group.

New Fortress is co-owned by Wesley Edens and Peter L. Briger, and Holowesko and Briger both work together at multinational investment firm, Goldman Sachs. In addition Briger and Holowesko’s wife, Alessandra Griffiths Holowesko, both serve on the Council on Foreign Relations – an American nonprofit think-tank on foreign policy and international affairs.

According to sources close to the matter, including consulting firm AES Corporation, the New Fortress bid lacks transparency and critical pieces of structural detail.

IMAGE: The BPL (Bahamas Power and Light) building. (Photo by Torrell Glinton)

For more on this story go to: https://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/2018/09/02/bahamas-utility-board-carnage-involves-shell-energy-in-unwelcome-controversy/