BEL says fuel price increase will not raise rates
On Tuesday News Five revealed that the price Belize Electricity Limited (BEL) pays for Mexican diesel has increased as much as ninety percent in the last year, meaning that the cost of Mexican energy had also gone up. Today the question on everyone’s lips is whether those factors will translate into a rise in electricity rates in Belize. This afternoon, News Five spoke with Chief Executive Officer for BEL, Lynn Young, who says despite financial losses, the company will keep its promise to lower rates.
Lynn Young, Chief Executive Officer, BEL
“Fuel prices have gone up for us by about 90%. In years gone by we would have had to gone back to the government and ask for a rate increase, but in fact we had a decrease in commercial rates recently and we are absorbing some cost now on the diesel end. The last few months have been hard, especially because it was dry. We didn’t have an upstream storage in Mollejon, so in January, February, March, April and May, we were barely getting any hydro production and we had to use a lot of diesel. I think that it has cost us about a million dollars extra in costs to date. But the rains have come and now that we are getting production out of Mollejon, the diesel production will reduce significantly. I think for the next 6 months or so, we will be able to mitigate some of that extra diesel cost as well as we will have to look at some areas where we can cut back on cost to keep things in line. As you know, we have a commitment to reduce electricity rates over the next 4 years and we are going to stick to that commitment. We’ve got to get out of this fossil fuel risk if we are going to meet those obligations.”
Stewart Krohn
“We’ve heard a lot about BEL’s future plans to increase generating capacity, to get away from fossil fuels, whether its by more hydro power, or the by gas fuel in the north. But so far it has just been talk, you haven’t done much lately, what is going on?”
Lynn Young
“What’s going on, is that you know we did our first environmental impact assessment and there are some concerns about the effect on wildlife. We feel very confident that the effects can be mitigated. We need to do a little bit more work on it and come up with a mitigation plan for that. But really, the hold up right now is that most of…putting up Chalillo is really to improve Mollejon and we don’t own Mollejon. So we are talking with the owners of Mollejon about a way to get pass that hurdle because in the interest of the country, we need to get this thing done. We need to get about from this dependence on fossil fuels, we need to have our own secure power supply in the country.”
