Puerto Rico needed electricity. That urgency was real. Years of generation shortages and repeated blackouts made additional power a public priority. Against that backdrop, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority pursued a contract for up to 400 megawatts of temporary generation at the Aguirre Power Plant — a deal potentially worth nearly $5.9 billion over 10 years.
Urgency, however, does not eliminate the need for basic due diligence. A government can move quickly and still know who its contractors are, whether they can perform, who has authority to bind them, and why they were selected.
This contract failed that test.
The agreement listed Power Expectations, Enchanted Rock, and Reyes Contractor collectively as the seller. Then it unraveled over the most elementary question in contracting: Had one of those companies actually agreed to be there?
Enchanted Rock says it never authorized its participation and that its name and signature were used without authorization. Power Expectations disputes that account, claiming a lengthy commercial relationship, an exclusive representation arrangement, executive meetings, financial guarantees, and operational agreements.
Those competing claims make the underlying documents more important, not less.
The Financial Oversight and Management Board ultimately revoked its approval and ordered PREPA to terminate the contract, concluding that the procurement process had been irreparably impaired. Critically, the board found that Power Expectations had not independently demonstrated the financial capacity and technical experience required. Enchanted Rock’s participation was one of the key factors supporting the consortium’s perceived ability to deliver.
The authorization question, therefore, goes to the heart of the award.
Investigations will determine whether laws were broken. But the public-policy failure is already clear — and it did not begin with a disputed signature.
Months earlier, the Oversight Board had raised concerns about Power Expectations’ financial capacity, bid security, execution plan, and the methodology for selecting the winner. Power Expectations had received the lowest evaluation score among scored proponents. The board also asked a decisive question: Why were three companies being listed collectively as the seller? It requested documentation showing that this multicompany arrangement had been properly evaluated and approved.
Those were the right questions. Yet the contract continued moving.
This is where the case becomes larger than Puerto Rico.
Modern government procurement often divides responsibility across multiple institutions. One office runs the solicitation. Another scores technical proposals. Another checks regulatory compliance. Another reviews fiscal consistency. Lawyers examine the contract language. The operating agency signs. Each performs its assigned function while no one clearly owns the transaction as a whole.
That fragmented accountability is the deeper weakness exposed here.
The Oversight Board itself noted that its review was not a substitute for legal due diligence or background checks on the contracting parties. Other entities had their own roles. Everyone reviewed something. But who owned the most basic question: Who had authority to commit Enchanted Rock?
Corporate authorization leaves records. If Power Expectations had authority to represent Enchanted Rock, documents should establish it. If a corporate resolution authorized a signature, it should define the scope. If a representation agreement existed, it should state what was permitted. If DocuSign was used, an audit trail should show the process. If PREPA verified authority before execution, evidence of that verification should exist.
These are not accusations. They are document questions. And document questions have document answers.
Enchanted Rock’s supposed participation mattered because its experience, equipment, and capacity helped support the consortium’s credibility. If it was never validly committed, every stage of the procurement that relied on its presence deserves another look. A company cannot simply be swapped out after the fact if its qualifications helped justify the original award.
Legislative scrutiny is now expanding, seeking communications, evaluations, and corporate records. Parallel questions have also arisen around public company disclosures. Enchanted Rock’s parent, ERock, filed for an IPO around the same period without mentioning the Puerto Rico project. Flotek, which later entered as a replacement, described the contract as economically significant and later faced criticism over the timing of its disclosures after the deal collapsed. These issues do not by themselves prove wrongdoing. They simply reinforce that material government contracts create documentation trails that should ultimately align.
Puerto Rico’s energy crisis makes the failure more consequential, not less. Residents needed power. Officials were under pressure. But emergency conditions cannot justify skipping the elementary controls that protect taxpayers.
Before the government asks whether a contractor offers the best price, it should know who the contractor is. Before it evaluates technical capability, it should know which companies have actually committed their capabilities. Before it relies on a partner’s reputation or balance sheet, it should verify that the partner agreed to participate. And before a multibillion-dollar agreement is signed, someone must be clearly responsible for confirming the authority of every party named on it.
The Oversight Board eventually stopped the contract. That matters. The larger lesson is more uncomfortable.
A transaction involving billions of dollars passed through procurement, regulatory, fiscal, and legal review before the validity of one participant’s authorization brought it down. The failure was not that the government lacked questions. Many of the right questions were asked. The failure was that responsibility for proving the answers was fragmented.
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Government does not merely need more oversight. It needs someone who owns the answer.
In a multibillion-dollar public contract, no one should discover after execution whether one of the parties had ever agreed to be there.
Pedro Ordein is a finance and operations professional with more than 30 years of experience in public-sector governance, large-scale project analysis, and institutional decision-making.