The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) has slammed a report in yesterday’s edition of the Kaieteur News, which stated that 50,000 gallons of fuel sent to the Skeldon Generation plant was contaminated, as a “figment of the imagination”.

In a terse statement, the power company said yesterday, “This claim [of contamination] is obviously a figment of the imagination of the people at Kaieteur News who repeatedly have been guilty of unethical journalism and who have never retracted fictitious claims or apologised in the past. We expect the same to happen again.”

The newspaper’s report claimed that some 50,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil out of a shipment of 120,000 gallons sent to Skeldon had been found to be contaminated.

According to the GPL statement yesterday, some 118,950 gallons of heavy fuel oil was transported to Guysuco’s Skeldon plant on April 11. It said that since the vessel was being used for the first time, samples of the fuel were taken from each of the eight compartments for analysis before delivery. “All the fuel has passed the analysis and discharge would be completed this evening,” the statement said.

The Kaieteur News report stated that the vessel used to ship the fuel was contracted for the first time by the power company and the fuel was shipped in eight tanks, four of which were found to be contaminated.

Meanwhile, in relation to the contaminated fuel delivered to the Anna Regina power station in January last, Managing Director of GPL Bharrat Dindyal said the results of the test done on the fuel in Trinidad were being circulated internally before being made public.

The contamination had caused extensive power outages on the Essequibo Coast for four days early in January. GPL had said in a press release at the time that the outages resulted from “a batch of fuel that was received at the Anna Regina Power Station over the weekend being contaminated.”

BK International had been responsible for shipping the fuel and in a letter to the press responding to a Kaieteur News article, the company accused that newspaper of seeking to convey the “false impression” that it was responsible for the contamination of fuel delivered by its vessel to GPL’s Essequibo power station.

BK’s Office Manager Egan Bazilio had said in the letter that as a result of the meeting held with the GPL management it was agreed that a series of tests would be conducted on the fuel. He had declared that it was premature to speculate on the matters in the absence of results. Samples were taken and sent to Trinidad for testing.