The following was reprinted from HONDURAS THIS WEEK, April 14, 2008...
Roatan Bruce: I would like to officially welcome you, Kelcy Warren, the new majority stock holder of RECO!
Kelcy Warren: Well, officially, I am not the owner of RECO yet. That will not happen for another couple of weeks. I am excited however to make that transition.
Roatan Bruce: Tell us a little about you. I know my listeners would like to get to know you better.
Kelcy Warren: I grew up in Texas and got my college education in Texas. I have been in the energy business my entire career. I run a company called Energy Transfer Partners. It is a Fortune 200 company. It is one of the largest companies in America. We distribute natural gas and propane across the United States. It’s been a very successful company.
I have a son. His name is Clyde. He is probably the thing I am most proud of in my life. He is only five years old. He loves it here. I fell in love with The Bay Islands awhile back and made an investment here. I tried to just blend into the scenery, but my nature did not allow me to do that for very long as is evidenced by my participation in RECO.
Roatan Bruce: What are some of your plans to get RECO back in good working order, in the short, mid and long term?
Kelcy Warren: Without access to capital and with Roatan growing at the rate it is growing, you can’t run this business correctly. It will ultimately fail as it did. This is not a complicated solution. It is very straightforward. We generate power here, we distribute it and we sell it to consumers. Hopefully, the sales price exceeds the cost to do those things. If they don’t, you are running a failed business. I am going to do everything in my power to correct that.
So, what do we do? It starts with competent management. Matthew Harper is a friend of mine. (Matthew has accepted the roll of Interim manager of RECO for 90 days.) He has done work for me elsewhere. I have great confidence in him. I also have Italo Tugliani, my legal counsel and advisor. I have incredible confidence in him. He has been a great friend and advisor. These gentlemen have helped steer me through the decisions I need to make. It is my job to fund those decisions that we make and fund them in a timely fashion and correctly.
We then start with an infu sion of capital. There will be some quick fixes that aren’t the most cost efficient fixes. We are right now working on the generators. Even though I don’t officially own RECO yet, I have funded a great deal of the cash to support fuel purchases and equipment restoration. That is ongoing.
We have bought in rental units. I don’t like that. We don’t need to be renting units here at RECO, but right now, we don’t have a choice on the short term.
That will get us through the first three months. I want everyone who consumes power on Roatan to know that this thing is really broke. It is really messed up. Please don’t expect an overnight turnaround. But I will tell you that I think you will not get a faster turnaround from anyone else. I have committed to spending the correct amount of dollars to fix this. I have committed to putting the correct kinds of people here to run it. These people care about Roatan. They care about the future. They care about the people. We are going to provide power to Roatan!
Now, let’s talk about the future. This will be tens of millions of dollars later and unfortunately a few years down the road. We are going to have a power plant that will be capable of handling a huge amount of growth that I anticipate will be coming to Roatan. Roatan is going to be a massive tourist attraction for years to come, but only if it has the correct infrastructure to draw in that economy.
Roatan Bruce: Can you give us an idea as to what preferences you see in alternative energies?
Kelcy Warren: We have to switch from diesel. Diesel is not the answer. There are cheaper hydro carbons that we will be switching over to. There are heavier residual fuels and they can burn clean. Going into the future, renewable energies is something I really like. It is very costly. Wind power is very costly, but there is a good source of wind here on Roatan. I would love to see us exploit that. A more short term fix is to switch over to residual fuel oil and then switch over to a different type of fossil fuel, possibly coal. Coal has a bad rap, but I assure you that coal is much less pollutive that what you are using now. Much less! You can put in clean burning plants.
One thing the island needs to consider is anyone who knows anything about the island knows that trash is eventually going to be a huge issue. Ultimately, that is going to be a huge problem. There are generators that can in fact burn trash and use the “BTU’s” generated from those combustible fuels to generate power. That will require cooperation from the government to do a type of sorting from the combustibles from the non-combustibles and delivering those to the power plant. I have a dream that that might be a possibility down the line. There are power plants that I can purchase that can burn those types of fuels.
Roatan Bruce: Thank you for taking on this task.
Kelcy Warren: I want everyone to know that I do exist and that I am a normal person and I want to continue to enjoy my relationship with the people of The Bay Islands.
Bruce Starr is the host of The Roatan Bruce Show heard on 106.5 FM weekdays from 9 am to 1 pm. Please visit his website at www.roatan bruce.com to hear this interview in full or all previous interviews. Contact him at [email protected] with your comments or suggestions or if you would like to learn when he starts live-streaming his radio show to people around the world.
