It’s time for an NB Power post
Posted by Lamespotting on 09 Nov 2009 at 04:00 am | Tagged as: Reviews
I’m not going to go into much detail as that’s already been covered before. There are a few points that I feel are important and are getting drowned out in the noise:
- There really isn’t much to gain in the long term. The value of the assets is about the same as the amount of the debt. Sure it erases the debt, but you lose assets that have potential to generate revenue.
- The 5 year rate freeze won’t be free. The loss of revenue for the frozen rates will have to be made up somehow. Presumably it will be made up from the revenues generated from exporting power to the US over NB’s transmission lines.
- Outside of the rate freeze, there appears to be little long-term benefit to NB. NB Power’s debt does not affect the borrowing capabilities or the interest rate for any other debt.
- In the long term, there will be no choice but to close down the thermal plants. Building replacement power plants will be expensive and difficult as they will have to be non-carbon plants (like nuclear). The easiest option is to purchase power from Quebec. In fact, they are currently supplying the power to replace the power that would have been generated by Pt. Lepreau.
NB Power’s reputation has been tainted recently due to some high-profile blunders. Rather than solving the real problem of incompetent executives that got their jobs through patronage appointments, Shawn Graham has opted to walk away from it.
The government and their spin machine has been working overtime to make NB Power look bad. There have not been high profile blunders, it is just being made to look that way. I don’t see them focusing on the fact that Belledune won an efficiency award by an international group for two five year periods, and quite frankly many more. It is in their interests to try to make them look like dogs. It is in our interests to wade through the BS and find the facts.
For instance, ready their annual report and look at the financials and you will find that a lot of what gov is saying is just not true.
Finally, I agree with you that this deal is being done on the backs of NBers and is NOT a good deal.
I can’t see the Coleson Cove refit as anything but a blunder. $750,000,000 was spend needlessly.
I also can’t understand how anyone could have thought that Pt. Lepreau would have been finished on time. It should have been obvious that it was an R&D project. Anyone who has any experience at all with an R&D project would know that you can’t force deadlines on an unknown process.
This is exactly what you get with patronage appointments. You have people who don’t have any business experience making large business decisions.