PHILIPSBURG-All districts are back online as of late Tuesday evening after an island island-wide power outage that started after 12.00pm on Tuesday. The outage that went into the early evening hours was due to a lack of fuel on the island to keep the power plant in operation on Tuesday.The situation should be completely stabilized by midday Wednesday.
GEBE management was informed late last week by SOL - main fuel supplier to GEBE - about a shortage of Heavy Fuel Oil. SOL and GEBE exhausted all possibilities to continue the electricity supply to the community of St. Maarten up until Tuesday midday.
The GEBE Power Plant at Cay Bay switched over to light fuel over the weekend and this allowed the generators to function until after 12.00 pm midday on Tuesday. Prior to that, some load shedding did take place, however, the generators were not able to carry the load and in order for the power generation equipment not to sustain any damage, the plant operation had to be shut down.
A fuel barge from Statia Oil Terminals provided some fuel at 5.00am on Tuesday but had to be re-routed to a cruise ship docked at the cruise pier in Philipsburg. Statia Oil Terminals has an existing contractual agreement to supply fuel to cruise vessels.
Around 6.00pm on Tuesday the Statia Oil Terminals barge returned to the Cay Bay area where it resumed its operations in providing fuel to GEBE.
A number of system checks had to be carried out prior to turning on the electricity production units. Once these checks were successfully carried out various districts were brought back online.
At 8.30pm on Tuesday a SOL oil tanker arrived at Cay Bay and during the course of Wednesday SOL's fuel depot tanks in Cay Bay will be replenished. Thereafter, fuel oil will then be supplied to the GEBE Power Plant.
Both GEBE and SOL have tightened their controls on the fuel supplies since an "off-spec" fuel delivery caused a number of outages and engine problems earlier this year. The difficulty in sourcing Heavy Fuel Oil at GEBE's specifications and the increased demand at the start of the tourist season are the main reasons behind the temporary fuel shortage.
