Last week, the small Montana company Whitefish Energy announced it had signed a $300 million contract with the Puerto Rican electric utility to help restore power after two hurricanes swept over the U.S. territory last month.
The size and undisclosed details of the contract are drawing attention from Congress and the Puerto Rican government. The mayor of San Juan went so far Wednesday as to call for the contract to be voided. The company asked her on Twitter if they should send crews home.
Chris Chiames is a spokesperson for Whitefish Energy Holdings. I spoke with him on his cell phone in San Juan.
We started with a status update.
Chris Chiames: We're very pleased with our progress. We think we're days away from restoring power back to an important industrial part of the island. That's critical to get the factories and the facilities back online and getting people back to work. So we're pleased with the work, there’s a lot more to be done, and there are a lot of other parties who have to do their piece of this work to get electrical power back to all the people of Puerto Rico.
Nicky Ouellet: I know you’ve been subcontracting workers through Jacksonville Electric Authority out of Florida. Did you bring any linemen or working crews from Flathead Valley in Montana?
CC: We have workers from all over the country, including Puerto Rico. I can’t tell you I can’t tell you where the others are coming from. We certainly have a contingent from the Montana area and the Flathead Valley, but I can't give you numbers.
NO: The story of Whitefish Energy doing its work in Puerto Rico blew up this week. What do you make of all this media attention this week?
CC:Well, quite frankly we think the question shouldn't be why is Whitefish there? The issue should be, why aren’t others here? We’ve been here for going on three weeks now. We’re getting things done. The people of Puerto Rico have expressed growing appreciation for our work. So, quite frankly we think the media’s attention and Washington’s attention ought to be, why aren’t more people here helping? This process is slow. It’s not slow because of what we’re doing, it’s slow because other people aren’t here.
NO: I think some of the surprise though is that Whitefish, until this contract, was relatively unknown, it didn’t have a whole ton of experience under its belt. Do you see people’s point, that this is quite a large contract going to a small company?
CC: I don’t agree with the premise that ... the company is unknown. We’ve been very transparent. We’ve been posting updates every day via social media. We generated hundreds of thousands of views and comments about our work off our Facebook and Twitter feeds. We have nothing to hide and we haven’t been hiding it.
NO: You’ve told other outlets that Whitefish CEO Andy Techmanski does not have a close relationship with Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. But people back in the Flathead Valley see these two men are from the same town, that Zinke’s son worked for Andy for a summer, and they can’t get past this notion that there’s some connection or some favor being pulled. Is there any basis for someone to make a conclusion like that?
CC: Our CEO Andy Techmanski and Secretary Zinke know each other, because they live in a town of 7,000 people where everyone knows everyone. We secured this work with PREPA on our own. The Interior Dept. doesn’t have any oversight or any reason to be involved in this, so there would be no reason to ask for favors, nor were any given.
NO: Was this a bidding process? Isn’t that typically how this works?
CC: In an emergency response system, local governments are often relying on either contractors they know, contractors who are recommended to them, providers who have a history in this space, and that’s what PREPA did. So, it wasn’t like it was a no bid system.
NO: At this point, Chiames and I have been speaking for about 12 minutes.
CC: I gotta cut this off, do you have anything else?
NO:How much has PREPA already paid out to Whitefish Energy and what was that to cover?
CC: I don’t have that information handy.
Chiames then asked to go off the record.
Earlier this week the Washington Post reported that Whitefish had already received $3.7 million for mobilization costs.
This contract is a public document. Chimes referred me to the Puerto Rican utility for a copy. The utility referred me to the Puerto Rican Comptroller’s Office. The Administrator of Public Documents at the Comptroller’s Office told me the contract isn’t yet available, Whitefish Energy hasn’t registered with their office yet. The Comptroller's Office said companies have a little extra time to file necessary documents because power and the internet are offline.
Whitefish Energy’s work is just a fraction of what it will take to turn the lights back on in Puerto Rico. The Army Corps of Engineers has also contracted companies to restore power.
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