Wayne McKenzie, general manager of Jamaica Energy Partners.

Jamaica Energy Partners (JEP) has changed ownership once again, and is back in the hands of the same private-equity fund that sold off the company a year and a half ago to a Dominican Republic outfit.

New York-based Conduit Capital Partners, which announced the 100 per cent reacquisiton of JEP Friday, said it would move imme-diately to add a 60 MW generating unit that JEP had been pursuing.

Conduit did not immediately explain its change of heart, having sold JEP for US$92.5 million back in December 2007.

Chairman J. Scott Swensen was said to be travelling Tuesday, but a Conduit publicist later pointed to "changing market opportunities" that had been mentioned but not entirely explained in a previous release.

Largest private power provider

But JEP, which is the largest private power provider to monopoly distributor Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS), is itself on the hunt for capital to build out the additional 60 MW - which would take its installed capacity to 185 MW on completion - but also to launch into markets overseas.

JEP is reportedly looking to the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank Group's private sector lending arm, among other investors, to raise unspecified millions of US dollars.

"We are in the process of acquiring financing for several planned expansion projects," JEP General Manager WayneMcKenzie told Wednesday Business this week.

McKenzie said the company was looking to a mix of local, regional and multilateral lenders, but would give no time frame in which he expected the cash hunt to be wrapped up, or the amount of money being sought.

JEP has a more than decade-long history with the IFC, whose archived reports refer to an unspecified 1997 loan to JEP, and another in 2006, for which consideration of US$73 million was on the table.

Pressed whether the IFC, which has provided millions of US dollars in loans and debt restructuring for JEP before, would be on-board this time around, McKenzie was evasive but suggested that talks were under way with the multilateral.

"The IFC has always had an interest in being a lender to JEP," he said.

Trinidad's Clico Investment Bank, part of the CL Financial (CLF) Group, which is at the centre of a region-wide meltdown and government takeovers, also provided financing for JEP's previous expansion in 2005.

The energy company is maintaining that CLF's current troubles are having no repercussion on that arrangement.

"Clico is a lender to JEP. Our debt stock has not been impacted, and JEP is able to pay its debts," McKenzie said, declining to disclose the size of the Clico debt or how highly leveraged JEP was overall.

Parent Conduit financed its reacquisition from Basic Energy - a project of CEPM Limited of The DomRep and Energy of Spain - the third tranche of its Latin Power Fund, capitalised at US$392 million, but has not disclosed the buy price.

Regional power platform

Conduit, as part of the deal, also acquired a 55 per cent share in the 55 MW capacity Pedregal Power Company in Panama and the "right to interests" in two other unspecified developments in the region.

Conduit chairman Swensen, in an official release, described the acquisitions as the "foundation of an exciting regional power platform".

McKenzie said the change of JEP ownership was not expected to have a negative impact on the business, but would see a major shift in emphasis, which includes Caribbean-wide expansion.

"With the change, JEP's responsibility and role as a development company will be augmented," he said. "We will be assuming a greater role for developing green-field projects on behalf of Conduit in Jamaica and the English-speaking Caribbean," McKenzie said.

JEP operates eleven barge-mounted, diesel-fired generating units at Old Harbour Bay, producing 125 MW of power to the JPS' national grid.

The 60 MW expansion is scheduled to start later this year, with construction on a new unit also expected to begin later this year.

At the same time, the company is going up against The Cayman Islands' monopoly energy firm, Caribbean Utilities Company Limited (CUC), in a bid to land a multi-million-dollar deal to provide electricity to Grand Cayman - the largest of the three islands making up the tiny British Caribbean territory of just over 50,000 people.

The bids by JEP and CUC on which the Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA) of The Cayman Islands is expected to pronounce soon, were submitted to the ERA in April this year, according to information posted on the regulator's website.

"An announcement is expected soon and we would not want to pre-empt that," McKenzie said of the Cayman project.

In July last year, ERA opened the bidding for the construction and supply of two power-generating units of 16 MW each to provide a required 32 MW of power to CUC.

The Cayman-based energy company has indicated that it will be retiring several of its generating units between 2010 and 2013.

Of the new units being sought under the current bid, one is required to be installed before 2012 and the other before 2013.

Exploring opportunities

JEP, which was the first independent power provider in Jamaica, has denied media reports that it has rights to build power-supply facilities in Haiti, suggesting instead that opportunities are only being explored there.

"That report is a misrepresentation of the situation," said McKenzie.

While all its current generators are fuel-powered, the JEP official said the company was not ruling out alternative energy sources.

"We are ensuring that the technology we utilise in our power-generation operations is one that represents optimal thermal efficiency in a market characterised by increasing fuel prices," McKenzie said.

huntley.medley@gleanerjm.com

Jamaica Energy Partners' Dr Bird II power barge docked at Old Harbour, St Catherine. The company has been sold to an energy company based in the Dominican Republic. - File