By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A major oil theft from Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) was only exposed when the thief was distracted by having sex in his truck.

Pericles Maillis, the well-known attorney and environmental activist, revealed the bizarre episode to illustrate how Bahamian households and businesses are having to pay for “tremendous wastage and stealing” through higher BPL bills.

His account, given at a town meeting last August, was attached to the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority’s (URCA) just-released “statement of results and final decision” over the public consultation on BPL’s consumer protection plan (see inside articles on Pages 2-3B).

Mr Maillis, in his contribution, described how he, his family and the Bahamian people “are in a state of terror” over the rising costs of BPL’s service, adding: “I don’t believe that our prosperity is going to be sustainable.

“Electricity cost has wrecked the hotel, the chicken farm [Gladstone Farms]. I’ve watched it ruin small restaurants. As a lawyer I hear and see it all, including very close to me. I would hope that, at the end of the day, the main focus of BPL and URCA and government would be to work, strive to get the cost of electricity and these prices down. The real terror is the fuel surcharge.”

Turning to the latter, Mr Maillis said he was personally aware of numerous spills and thefts from BPL’s fuel line between the Clifton Pier and Blue Hills power stations. Thieves, he added, had been so bold as to cut into the line, install their own valves and pipes, and siphon off oil whenever - and how much - they wanted.

“While you have been putting up the fuel surcharge, there has been tremendous wastage and stealing of BEC (Bahamas Electricity Corporation) fuel,” the well-known attorney disclosed, recounting several incidents that had affected his and neighbouring properties in the Adelaide Village/Albany area.

Calling for URCA to mandate that BPL improve its security and environmental practices, Mr Maillis recalled how in early 2017 he found diesel oil from the utility’s pipeline “pouring into the corner of my property”. He described the resulting “oil field” and how he reported the matter to BPL’s security and New Providence Development Company, who informed him it had resulted from theft.

Revealing that he had the pictures to prove it, Mr Maillis told the Town Meeting: “The people had actually dug under the road, put in a valve, run a pipe out to the edge of the bush, then run another pipe out to the back. The truck would go out to the back (and) fill up when it wanted.

“According to the New Providence Development Company security guard, it only came to light by accident because the same thief who was stealing the diesel was having sex with a girl in the truck while the truck was being loaded, and it started pouring all over the ground. That is how it came to light.

“That is diesel going and going all that time, and we don’t know how long it was going, and we the public are paying for the fuel surcharge. So that one got sealed off with concrete.”

Mr Maillis recounted other incidents, and said: “For a very long time the public has been paying fuel surcharge, and the fuel is being stolen or wasted. Where it is wasted into the ground, it brings us cancer, pollution and contamination.

“So when you [URCA] finish the drafting of this, please mandate BPL they have got to get these kinds of things under control, and they have to maximise security because we should not have to be paying for stolen or wasted fuel......

“I want someone to go to jail for these stealings. I am going to ask the Government; we need a House [of Assembly] committee with power to send for people and persons to bring to light to how many breaches are known of this pipeline; how many millions of gallons are missing. We need it stopped. And who is covering it up?

“We need BPL to get its operations honest, streamlined, cheaper, so that those expenses of capital improvements and fuel expenditures don’t have to come back to us. We’ve got to get our cost down.”

URCA, in its response, said it sympathised with Mr Maillis’s concerns but that BPL’s consumer protection plan was not the best place to address them. It indicated it would look at other ways to deal with the matter through its powers as energy sector regulator.

“URCA is sympathetic to Mr Maillis’s comment regarding fuel spill, wastage and fuel theft, and agrees that BPL should work towards maximising the security and safety of its consumers,” the regulator said in its just-released results statement.

“However, the focus of this document are the standards of service, quality and safety of the electricity service provided directly to the consumer, such as how the company deals with voltage deviations and disputes with consumers. URCA will take into consideration Mr Maillis’s comments in the exercise of its functions as the regulator of the electricity sector.”