Tribe in talks with potential NGS investors

Posted by Cindy Yurth | Nov 9, 2017 | Business |

CHINLE

In an effort to preserve hundreds of Navajo jobs, the Navajo Nation is interviewing several entities interested in investing in the Navajo Generating Station, according to Mihio Manus, senior public information officer for the president’s office.

Navajo Times | Krista Allen
Lake Powell Country is bracing for the possible shutdown of the Navajo Generating Station located in LeChee, Arizona. The plant supplies about 500 jobs to the area.

The tribe is under the gun to find a buyer for the plant, which otherwise will close in 2019. The Salt River Project, the plant’s majority owner, originally set a deadline of Oct. 1 for other stakeholders to identify a buyer, but SRP spokesman Scott Harrelson said that date was not absolute.

“The October date was simply to notify the Nation and others that any serious interest in the plant would need to be communicated quickly,” Harrelson wrote in an email to the Times. “SRP was informed of interest by several parties and … are providing them with whatever data and information they require about the plant in order to make their own assessment.”

Harrelson said he could not identify the interested parties because of non-disclosure agreements. Manus said he had not been provided with a list and did not know who or how many are potential investors.

An Oct. 2 press release from Peabody Energy Co., whose Kayenta Mine is the sole supplier of coal to the NGS, stated that Lazard Freres & Co. LLC, an international investment banking firm, is in charge of the transition. Neither Peabody nor Lazard responded by press time to an inquiry as to who had hired Lazard, and whether the multinational company was pursuing foreign investors.

George Billicic, Lazard vice chairman and global head of power, energy and infrastructure, stated in the release that the company is “pleased with the robust response to the plant’s ownership transition process to date,” adding that it hoped to be “negotiating definitive agreements by the end of the first quarter of 2018.”