Tripoli: March 31
The Canadian company whose inspection technology helped pinpoint damaged pipework in the Man-Made River is returning to work in . . .[restrict]Libya, after being paid a large part of its outstanding debt.
Pure Technologies of Calgary has announced that $16 million of a $22 million outstanding bill has been settled by the Man-Made River Authority (MMR). As a result the company will resume its inspection work on the $40 billion water pipeline. It will also bring in a final shipment of monitoring equipment worth $10.7 million. A Pure technology team, which has been waiting in Benghazi, will begin immediately to recommission the monitoring systems.
Pure chairman Jamie Paulson told the Calgary Herald on Friday: “We’re gratified and looking forward to getting the rest of the payment made.”
He said that the resumption of normal banking operations in Libya, coupled with the advocacy on Pure’s behalf by the Man-Made River Authority, had brought about the back payment. He added that it had probably helped that the company had sent employees back to Benghazi to await the financial settlement.
As reported in Libya Herald on March 21, the company had been expecting an imminent payment and was poised to resume its operations.
The debt the company was owed arose from a $30 million contract signed in 2010 to deploy its proprietary acoustic monitoring software. Pure has been working on the MMR project since 2000 after failures in the four metre wide pre-stressed concrete piping. The network had suffered five serious ruptures over a three year period.
After proving their technology with a pilot project on a short stretch of the network, Pure was given the job of providing technical support to the MMT Authority to help it maintain the system. The firm’s technology has been used to monitor 600 km of the 1,200 km network. Pure says that from 2000 up until when its withdrew its employees in February last year, no further ruptures occurred in the part of the network it was checking.
Poulson said that he anticipated that remaining payments outstanding on the MMR contracts that Pure holds, would be paid in due course.
When the news of the settlement broke, Pure shares jumped ten percent on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
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