Renu­ka Singh

A vir­tu­al dance at yes­ter­day's Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) in­to the man­age­ment of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) end­ed with the con­fir­ma­tion that elec­tric­i­ty cus­tomers should see the dou­bling or tripling of their bill in short or­der.

Mem­ber of the JSC, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sen­a­tor Anil Roberts and his col­league Sad­dam Ho­sein shook up the nor­mal­ly staid pro­ceed­ings by ques­tion­ing, in turn, the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC), T&TEC and the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties about the price that T&TEC pays for nat­ur­al gas from the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and when the RIC would com­plete its rate re­view.

"It can show that the pop­u­la­tion can now look for­ward to vast in­creas­es for their elec­tric­i­ty," Roberts said.

The RIC was rep­re­sent­ed by its chair Dawn Cal­len­der and its ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Glenn Khan.

This dis­cus­sion of the rate re­view came just days af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced the re­moval of bil­lions of dol­lars in sub­si­dies that will im­pact elec­tric­i­ty prices.

"The Gov­ern­ment is mak­ing pol­i­cy and the RIC is in­de­pen­dent and the Gov­ern­ment is mak­ing claims and state­ments that I am util­is­ing elec­tric­i­ty in­ef­fi­cient­ly in my home be­cause we get it too cheap­ly be­cause we have nat­ur­al gas. I am ask­ing you as the RIC if this pol­i­cy po­si­tion of the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to im­pact your rec­om­men­da­tion of pric­ing as an in­de­pen­dent or­gan­i­sa­tion," Roberts asked.

"If the Gov­ern­ment says we are go­ing to charge you (T&TEC) dou­ble or triple for the gas, there is noth­ing that the RIC could do," he said.

"I am ask­ing you the Gov­ern­ment that we pay too lit­tle for our elec­tric­i­ty and we use too much and there­fore they are go­ing to raise the price to force us to con­serve, the on­ly way they could raise the price is through the RIC, how is their pol­i­cy po­si­tion go­ing to im­pact your (RIC) rate rec­om­men­da­tion?" he asked the RIC.

The dis­cus­sion was so an­i­mat­ed that Roberts was ac­cused of bad­ger­ing the RIC by the JSC chair De­o­dath Teemul.

Gen­er­al Man­ag­er at T&TEC Kelvin Ram­sook jumped in­to the dis­cus­sion and said that the State com­pa­ny does not know the cost of nat­ur­al gas that it would be pur­chas­ing from NGC but said that there was no sub­sidy on the gas from NGC, the rate would be US90 cents.

He said that even at the sub­sidised rate, T&TEC is un­able to meet its com­mit­ment to pay NGC.

Roberts thanked him for that in­for­ma­tion.

"This is go­ing to be pain for the cit­i­zens and it's not bad­ger­ing it is very im­por­tant. When they re­move the sub­sidy and it goes up to US90 cents we could en­vi­sion a dou­bling or tripling of the bill and the peo­ple would like to know that, that's all," Roberts said.

Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bev­er­ly Khan said that in the ab­sence of the ac­tu­al cost of the gas from NGC, the Min­istry had cre­at­ed var­i­ous sce­nar­ios.

"The price of gas that T&TEC pur­chas­es its sup­ply to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty is a key fac­tor in its busi­ness plan and in any rate re­view process. At the Min­istry what we have done is de­vel­op sev­er­al sce­nar­ios as to what this gas price could be and we have tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, of course, the im­pact on con­sumers, while bal­anc­ing that against the util­i­ty and its abil­i­ty to meet op­er­a­tional ex­pen­di­ture," Khan said.

"All the sce­nar­ios is now be­fore the en­er­gy sub­com­mit­tee of the Cab­i­net, we ex­pect that we would have a de­ci­sion very short­ly on the mat­ter of the pre­ferred price at which NGC will sell the gas to T&TEC," she said.

When pressed for a dead­line Khan said that the da­ta was sent to the sub­com­mit­tee "ear­li­er this year".

Khan al­so con­firmed that the sce­nar­ios in­clud­ed the ex­ist­ing sub­sidy.

Roberts al­so ques­tioned the in­de­pen­dence of the RIC.

"Is the RIC in in­de­pen­dent or­gan­i­sa­tion and in­sti­tu­tion?" Roberts asked.

"We have heard from the Gov­ern­ment that the rates in T&T are ex­ceed­ing­ly low and their po­si­tion is that they must be in­creased be­cause we can­not take ad­van­tage of our gas sub­sidy and of be­ing born here and be­ing blessed with nat­ur­al re­sources. Does the RIC have to fol­low this Gov­ern­ment po­si­tion, do you have to take it on board or do you for­mu­late your own con­cept from your con­sul­ta­tions in­de­pen­dent­ly?" Roberts asked.

Cal­len­der as­sured him that the RIC was in­de­pen­dent and for­mu­lat­ed its own course based on its in­for­ma­tion.

"We would al­so do a lot of bench­mark­ing in­ter­na­tion­al bench­mark­ing," she said.

She said that us­ing a bench­mark was not the same as adopt­ing a bench­mark and it usu­al­ly was the start­ing point and not the end­ing point.

Roberts ques­tioned the pro­ceed­ings af­ter he said his hand was up for nine min­utes and he was not al­lowed to speak.

Teemul as­sured him that it was not de­lib­er­ate and al­lowed Roberts to re­turn to a ques­tion to the RIC that was posed by JSC chair De­o­dath Teemul but that was not ad­dressed about whether the RIC could use its pow­er to force the T&TEC to pro­vide the in­for­ma­tion it need­ed to be­gin its rate re­view.

Cal­len­der said that the RIC does not have that au­thor­i­ty.

"What the RIC is al­lowed to do is to make cer­tain as­sump­tions, of course, there should be a lim­it to how as­sump­tions are used," she said.

"If you do not have a sub­mis­sion from T&TEC, it would al­most be an ex­er­cise, if I could use this phrase, in fic­tion in that we would now be mak­ing all the as­sump­tions and I think that would be un­sat­is­fac­to­ry," she said.

RIC's Khan added that they "av­er­age" the elec­tric­i­ty us­age.

"We sort of av­er­age the amount of elec­tric­i­ty a house would re­quire with­in a month and we tend to use low-in­come hous­es for the ba­sis. So we look at that and we set the low­est pos­si­ble rates," Khan said.

"Any­thing above that lev­el is when we start es­ca­lat­ing the prices based on us­age," he said.

"We try to keep the in­crease with­in a num­ber that is be­ing used by the World Bank which is that elec­tric­i­ty should be less than 10 per cent of the house­holds dis­pos­able in­come," he said.