Early Market Engagement To Begin on Montserrat"s Geothermal Plant Public Private Partnership

It will take a mixture of international partnerships with potential investors, alongside local expertise, and policy driven initiatives to seriously move the Montserrat economy forward.

To bring in a 21st century, modern and most importantly, an impactful type of economic engagement for Montserrat, the effort must be employed to not only talk about building international relationships for investment, but more so, to have face to face dialogue with these key partners towards seeking to sell Montserrat's opportunities in a view towards possible agreement on a public/private partnership arrangement.

It is this level of thinking, and active sourcing that is been driven forward by the Minister for Communications, Works, Energy and Labour (MCWEL) - Hon Paul J. Lewis.

The Department of International Development (DFID) recently challenged the Government of Montserrat, when their Deputy Head Mr Indranil Chakrabarti visited the island during the summer. Geothermal energy was one of the issues considered stalled on the island, as it was DFID that was responsible for that project. However, the project was at a standstill for a while due to some technical adversities that developed.

Today, MNI Media can report that in an effort to advance the plant phase of the Montserrat Geothermal Project, the Ministry of Communications, Works, Labour & Energy has embarked on an Early Market Engagement (EME) mission.

The Early Market Engagement process, involves soliciting information from experienced Geothermal Developers and Engineering, Procurement and Construction companies as to the scope of works, terms of conditions and general interest in the proposed Montserrat Geothermal Plant Public Private Partnership project.

The Ministry will facilitate site visits to Montserrat involving tours of the three (3) geothermal wells (Mon1, 2 & 3) and meetings with the geothermal and energy teams and the sharing of information gleaned from the well testing of Mon 1 & 2 to date, for interested companies at no cost to the Government of Montserrat.

The Mytenders Portal will be used to facilitate this Early Market Engagement process, ensuring transparency and equality in dealing with all companies engaged.

The expected deliverables of this Early Market Engagement process are as follows:
1. The Information shared by the companies that participated in this process.
2. A Montserrat Geothermal Plan Public-Private Partnership – Early Market Engagement Report of the analysis of the information collected and procurement options.

The proposed next steps, are a series of meetings with the Government of Montserrat, to review and ratify the Early Market Engagement Report and then with DFID to discuss the Early Market Engagement Report and funding options.

The Energy team within the Ministry of Communications, Works, Labour and Energy believe that the above-mentioned process will better inform both Government of Montserrat and DFID, thus allowing collaborated decisions to be made, to realize geothermal energy on Montserrat.

Exergy, is the first company which is expected to participate in the EME and should arrive on Montserrat, by November 17th, 2017.

More participants are expected to be engaged to begin the process of moving the geothermal project forward via the vision so laid out and is being acted upon proactively by Minister Lewis and the team at MCWEL.