LIHU‘E — Oil prices topped $80 a barrel last month despite lower demand and a bad economy, leading Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative Chief Financial Officer David Bissell to think that speculation is to blame. “The sky is almost the limit
LIHU‘E — Oil prices topped $80 a barrel last month despite lower demand and a bad economy, leading Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative Chief Financial Officer David Bissell to think that speculation is to blame.
“The sky is almost the limit as far as petroleum is concerned,” Bissell said last week at the monthly KIUC Board of Directors meeting at KIUC headquarters in Lihu‘e.
The uncertainty of oil prices makes it that much more important for KIUC leaders to push forward aggressively with plans for alternative forms of energy, he said, to “try to mitigate our exposure.”
Toward that end, KIUC’s Shawn DeMille announced that savings between $200,000 and $1 million (depending on the price of a barrel of oil) will be saved by KIUC’s burning of one million gallons of waste oil at its Port Allen power plant. The plan has state Public Utilities Commission approval, and the waste oil is en route from O‘ahu, Bissell said.
For the first nine months of this year, KIUC members paid $93 million for electricity, compared to $150 million for the same period last year, Bissell said.
That means members spent $57 million less for electricity over the first nine months this year than the same period last year, while KIUC spent $44 million less for fuel for the first nine months of this year compared to the same period in 2008, said Bissell.
In other matters at the meeting, the board voted to authorize KIUC staff to pursue the possibility of electronic and telephone voting, as well as the traditional mail-in balloting, for the 2010 board election.
Board member Steve Rapozo, Nominating Committee chair, announced the members of the Nominating Committee for next year’s election: Edee Bandmann, former state Rep. Ezra Kanoho, county Office of Economic Development Director George Costa Jr., and Tom Shigemoto of Alexander & Baldwin, a former county planning director.
Members may seek election to the board either by nomination through the Nominating Committee, or by submitting member petitions.
Also at the meeting, board members approved the selection of current board secretary and Finance and Audit Committee Chair David Iha to serve the remainder of Dennis Esaki’s term on the board, through March 2011.
Esaki resigned in May. Iha’s previous term was to have expired in March 2010.
The KIUC board bylaws allow between seven and nine board members. The current board has eight members.
• Paul C. Curtis, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or pcurtis@kauaipubco.com.
