The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The company caught up in the Letter of Intent (LOI) controversy yesterday described it as a “storm in a tea cup”, adding that it would not allow its reputation to be sullied by politicians ‘milking’ the affair.

J.P. Michelsen, Stellar Energy’s chief operating officer, asserted that the Bahamian people “couldn’t care less” about the LOI issue, and were more concerned about a reduction in their electricity bills.

“We are not going to allow any political personality, or so they think, to stop us from telling the truth and doing right as far as energy reform is concerned,” he said.

“ Until this government tells us ‘Stop what you are doing because we are not going to do this’, we are going to continue to speak truth about this entire matter. The only people still talking about the LOI are people who make a living out of politics or people outside of the House of Assembly that lost their seat in the last election.”

Mr Michelsen added: “LOIs are being signed in this country every day. This one became such an issue because the wrong person signed it; that’s it. We continue to play politics instead of doing the right thing.

“I just think it’s more convenient to keep this going from the political side of things. The public at large couldn’t care less about this LOI thing. They care about their BEC bill,whether it’s through waste-to-energy or any other form, to get the cost of electricity to go down in this country. It’s a storm in a tea cup.”

Controversy erupted over the signing of Stellar’s now-expired LOI by former Ministry of Works parliamentary secretary, Renward Wells, last year. The saga ultimately led to his dismissal from Government.

During a contribution in Parliament, Mr Wells, an engineer by profession, admitted he had signed the LOI with Stellar Energy in order to allow the company “to carry out studies” free of charge to present to Cabinet.

Mr Michelsen said Stellar was still in talks with the Christie administration over its plans to construct a $650 million plasma gasification waste-to-energy (WtoE) plant, which would be located at the New Providence landfill.

“We are still talking to this Government about that. Nothing changed, no matter how many people are trying to put political spin on it,” he added.

“If there is one thing this administration has done which cannot be denied, is that they have done more towards energy reform than any previous administration in the Commonwealth of The Bahamas.

“We need to do our FEL (Front End Lead) studies; we need to do FEL 2 and FEL 3, but the LOI thing has put us back. People want to get the cost of energy down and there is no way we can get a serious reduction without renewables involved. We cannot get there with allowing people to put a couple of solar panels on their roofs.”

Dr Fabrizio Zanaboni, Stellar’s senior executive, said that while he has stayed out of the political fray, he has been in continuous discussions with investors who have made available $600 million in financing.

“I don’t understand the politics of these things but, speaking with our investors, they have been very patient. We could have started this project 12 months ago; we had 100 per cent of the funding available 12 months ago, and by now the plant would already be under construction,” Dr Zanaboni said.

Mr Michelsen added that it was not only investors who have been on stand-by, but also Stallar’s technical team. “All of this political wrangling and the dump is burning. I don’t know what Renew Bahamas’ mandate is because it was never properly explained,” he said.

“ I know that they have made some improvements at the landfill from where it was before, but we cannot ignore the fact that we have millions of cubic yards of trash sitting there that’s not recyclable and needs to be used in waste to energy.”