Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro (Hydro) is correcting inaccurate and ill-informed statements made by Danny Dumaresque on Monday, March 17, regarding the operations of the Holyrood Thermal Generating Station and its fuel supply.

Contrary to the speculation undertaken by Dumaresque, the quality of the fuel burned at the Holyrood plant over the past year had no impact on the outages experienced at the plant in January 2013 and January 2014. Dumaresque is drawing inaccurate conclusions from information supplied by Hydro to the Newfoundland and Labrador Board of Commissioners of Public Utilities.

Additionally, statements made by Danny Dumaresque demonstrate a lack of understanding of the steam-driven turbine units at the Holyrood plant. In this type of plant, the fuel system is used to generate steam in a large furnace which in turn operates the turbines that drive the generating units. Therefore issues in the fuel system cannot directly affect the turbines and the electrical generators.

Hydro has confirmed that it had some issues with the quality of the fuel oil delivered early in 2013 from a new supplier, and, as a result, there was some fuel system damage at the Holyrood plant in 2013, which has been corrected. Once Hydro was aware of the issue it took immediate action and addressed the matter with the fuel supplier and Hydro is no longer experiencing fuel system issues like what was experienced in 2013.