Marshalls Energy Company General Manager William F. Roberts is now in a 90-day transition period, with his last day on the job expected to be in early October.
Roberts, a British citizen, has managed MEC since early 1986 and has played an active role in regional utility development, chairing the Fiji-based Pacific Power Association for three years during the mid-2000s.
Until last week’s MEC board action, the utility company was the last major government entity in the country with a non-Marshall Islander CEO.
Paul is to be joined by an experienced Australian technical advisor who has experience in the power industry, including work in the Solomon Islands and other parts of the Pacific.
The MEC board has established a new position for this technical advisor position, who was one of the shortlist candidates, said MEC Chairman and Public Works Minister Maynard Alfred.
“Making these changes is a step to reorganizing the company,” said Alfred.
Paul starts with MEC on July 20, beginning a transition with Roberts for management of the company that oversees the electric companies in both the capital and the second urban center of Ebeye, Majuro Water and Sewer Company, Jaluit Atoll and Wotje Atoll power operations, and installation of solar equipment on remote outer islands throughout the country.
Paul is in the process of resigning from his post as Mobil Oil Micronesia’s territory manager for the Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia, a position he’s held for four years.
Prior to that, after graduating from college, he joined the Marshall Islands foreign service in 1998, working in embassies in New York and Taiwan, and later was seconded to the Office of Compact Negotiations in the 2002-04 period before returning to Foreign Affair as the undersecretary for Asia and Pacific Affairs.
“Once I turn over my responsibilities with Mobil and join MEC, my loyalty is to MEC and no one else,” said Paul, a reference to Mobil’s recent efforts to reestablish a fuel supply contract with MEC that it lost four years ago to South Korea’s SK Networks.
“This is a great challenge and opportunity to be part of an organization that is vital to the economy and development of the Marshall Islands,” Paul added.
Majuro’s power operation, now known as MEC, was launched in 1982 by a British company known as IPSECO, which built a 12-megawatt power plant.
MEC was incorporated as a company two years later and managed as a joint venture with IPSECO.
Roberts began working as a power plant engineer shortly after the Majuro plant was opened and was named general manager of MEC in March 1986, shortly after the MEC-IPSECO partnership dissolved with IPSECO’s bankruptcy.
Roberts has also, since the late 1990s, held the title of honorary consul for the U.K. government in the Marshall Islands.
“This was not an easy undertaking for me as chairman,” Alfred said Thursday.
“(Roberts) is a talented chief executive who has worked since the company was established.”
Roberts had tendered his resignation from the company in mid-2006, and his final day was to have been in Oct. 2006.
But then-President Kessai Note asked Roberts to stay on for an indefinite period to help MEC get through a crisis period that was developing at the time.
The Marshalls Energy Company began a search for a new general manager in September last year.
Alfred said some of the issues that extended Roberts’ term on the job had been resolved in the past three years, with the exception of reorganizing the company — the step now being launched with the MEC board’s decision this week.
