Kalain Ho­sein

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

The Guyana Pow­er and Light Inc. (GPL) last night de­nied it has any links to the sunken barge in To­ba­go’s wa­ters.

The re­sponse came af­ter Guyana Vice Pres­i­dent Bhar­rat Jagdeo’s call for a full probe, af­ter Guyana me­dia out­let News Source re­port­ed GPL’s pos­si­ble links to a deal in­volv­ing a fu­el ship­ment to the state-owned com­pa­ny.

In a state­ment, GPL said it “is aware of the re­cent oil spill that oc­curred off the coast of Trinidad and To­ba­go and joins with the rest of Guyana in ex­press­ing its con­cern re­gard­ing the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pli­ca­tions and im­pact on the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Re­count­ing the cir­cum­stances, GPL said they ten­dered for the sup­ply and de­liv­ery of heavy fu­el oil in June 2023 via na­tion­al com­pet­i­tive bid­ding.

Ac­cord­ing to GPL, six bids were re­ceived. GPL said the ten­der was award­ed on Oc­to­ber 24, 2023, to Staat­solie Maatschap­pij Suri­name N.V., which was the first-ranked bid­der.

GPL said an ad­di­tion­al award for the sup­ply and de­liv­ery of heavy fu­el oil was award­ed to the joint ven­ture Rapid Re­sults Inc. and Os­h­er In­ter­na­tion­al Hold­ings LLC (the sec­ond-ranked bid­der) to aug­ment GPL’s in­creas­ing con­sump­tion of heavy fu­el oil and sup­ply re­quire­ments.

The terms of both con­tracts re­quire the sup­pli­ers to de­liv­er the fu­el to GPL’s ports along the De­mer­ara Riv­er. GPL added, “Ti­tle, own­er­ship, and risk of loss for the fu­el pass­es from the sup­pli­ers to GPL at the dis­charge port.”

GPL said it had not re­ceived any no­ti­fi­ca­tion from any of its con­tract­ed fu­el sup­pli­ers that they had en­coun­tered dif­fi­cul­ties with their ves­sel(s), re­sult­ing in the loss of car­go.

GPL said it wished “to un­equiv­o­cal­ly state that the com­pa­ny is not re­lat­ed to this un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent.”