SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – Puerto Rico privatized the strength design toward Wednesday, looking for Genera Advertising when deciding to take over the process and you will repairs away from condition stamina age group gadgets about You.S. area within an initial $22.5 mil annual offer.
The new statement appear while the area struggles to reconstruct the crumbling energy grid amid persistent strength outages blamed simply about what Gov. Pedro Pierluisi titled “archaic and you can unpredictable” age bracket tools.
Torres also informed the package signifies more prices for the fresh condition utility company, and therefore keeps particular $nine billion in financial trouble – the largest of every Puerto Rican bodies agency – and you may stays mired in an acrimonious struggle with financial institutions because it tries to leave personal bankruptcy
“I know that individuals are on suitable song to offer all of our someone the fresh new legitimate and you will sensible time program which they deserve,” he said.
Genera Public relations are a subsidiary of the latest York-created The newest Fortress Opportunity, and that works closely with Shell Petroleum and other coal and oil brands.
“Now is a historic day,” said Assistant away from Condition Omar Marrero, which noted you to definitely latest hurricanes features found the fresh new deterioration and vital state of the island’s strength grid.
Puerto Rico’s generation equipment, a number of them more than 50 years old, features suffered blackouts at rates 5 times tough versus community mediocre nowadays, creating less than half of the electricity the federal government had prediction.
“Many years away from mismanagement and overlook have remaining Puerto Rico having a keen costly, unproductive and you will dated opportunity program,” said a national control board you to oversees Puerto Rico’s profit, in the a statement giving support to the deal approved so you can Genera Pr.