The Water and Power Authority issued a request for proposals Monday, seeking a new propane provider for the second time this year.
At nearly half the price of diesel, liquefied propane gas is a vital petroleum fuel, representatives of the perpetually cash-strapped utility have said. Getting the LPG has proved difficult, however.
An extension to WAPA’s contract with Geneva-based Vitol, much maligned by Virgin Islands legislators, ran out Aug. 31. A contract with Puerto Rico-based Empire Gas Company, signed in July, was supposed to replace Vitol, supplying 180,000 barrels of LPG a month. But that contract was scuttled in mid-August after concerns about the process to select Empire Gas.
An April request for proposals garnered four on-time respondents, none of whom met WAPA’s requirements, WAPA officials said. Empire Gas had sent in a bid but after the RFP deadline. With the Vitol fuel contract soon to end, WAPA’s board voted to allow Executive Director Karl Knight to negotiate with Empire Gas directly, bypassing RFP protocols. When the resulting contract with Empire Gas was rescinded, WAPA’s board voted to enter a stop-gap temporary contract with Empire Gas set to begin Sept. 15 and last through March 14, 2026, according to WAPA documents.
The new request for proposal, issued Monday, asks potential LPG suppliers to ship roughly 2,000,000 barrels of propane to the territory annually. The contract would last two years, with an option for WAPA to extend for another year. Deadline for responses, printed bold in the RFP text, is Oct. 24 at 11:59 p.m., Atlantic Standard Time.
Utility officials plan to evaluate bids based on price, payment terms, qualifications and experience, financial stability, compliance, corporate social responsibility, emergency and hurricane planning, and technical and operational planning.
WAPA urged would-be bidders to join site tours on St. Croix and St. Thomas to see the operational environment, logistical constraints, and infrastructure at the delivery points — some of which can be tricky.
St. Thomas’ Randolph Harley Power Station is fairly easily accessed at its deep-water Krum Bay jetty. Industry insiders have described the Estate Richmond Power Plant in Christiansted as a much more difficult delivery point.
The St. Thomas power plant can accommodate a 128-meter-long, 20.4-meter-wide vessel with a maximum draft of 8.71 meters and a maximum deadweight of 13,104 tons. The St. Croix power plant’s load-in point can accommodate a 95-meter-long, 15.98-meter-wide vessel with a maximum draft of just 5.5 meters and a maximum weight of 3,190 tons.
Suppliers have an option to ship fuel to St. Thomas, then to St. Croix aboard a smaller vessel. Preference would be given to suppliers that could ship directly to each island, however, WAPA said in its RFP.
Based on storage capacity and average demand, WAPA’s St. Thomas operations can hold a little more than 18 days’ worth of fuel. St. Croix has capacity to hold slightly more than 19 days, according to the RFP.
The new RFP comes as the St. Thomas-St. John district ends a week of electrical interruptions — including a district-wide outage Sept. 3. Shanell Petersen, WAPA’s director of communications, said the outages were due to equipment failures and unrelated to fuel supply.
