Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello called Sunday for the island’s power company to nix a contract with Whitefish Energy Holdings.
(REUTERS/Carlos Barria)
The Puerto Rican government’s power company is going to scrap its $300 million contract with Whitefish Energy Holdings once it wraps up current work on Hurricane Maria recovery efforts, power company director Ricardo Ramos said Sunday.
Ramos said he’s bowing to a demand by Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosello, who had called Sunday for the island’s power company to cancel the contract with the Montana company from Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s hometown.
Ramos says the cancellation will delay work by 10 to 12 weeks.
The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) awarded the contract to Whitefish Energy Holdings help crews restore transmission and distribution lines damaged or destroyed during the hurricane.
The two-year-old company had just two full-time employees when the storm hit last month, but says it is contracting with hundreds of workers for the Puerto Rico project.
“I have petitioned the board of PREPA to invoke the cancellation clause so that after the current immediate work that is being done is finished, that contract is no longer available,” Rossello said Sunday, according to BuzzFeed.
ZINKE: ‘I HAD ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO’ WITH MONTANA COMPANY GETTING $300M CONTRACT
“It’s interfering with everything and it doesn’t go towards the best interests of the people of Puerto Rico,” he reportedly said referring to the contract.
The contract for the small Montana company has come under intense scrutiny, and audits of the Whitefish contract at a local and federal level are under way.
“I had absolutely nothing to do with Whitefish Energy receiving a contract in Puerto Rico,” Zinke said in a statement Friday. “Any attempts by the dishonest media or political operatives to tie me to awarding or influencing any contract involving Whitefish are completely baseless.”
Fox News’ John Roberts and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
