JAMAICA Public Service (JPS) President Kelly Tomblin expects lower oil prices to benefit the utility company amid posting US$3.6 million ($413 m) net profit for its September 2014 quarter.

JPS expects disconnections to fall as the fuel component dips on customer bills.

“I know it’s hard to believe, but every time our customers have a bill they can afford… it’s positive for the utility,” Tomblin said in a phone interview on Thursday. “So as fuel prices go down — as they have, and we think it will be sustained over the next six months — then our customers should have a lower bill, which would mean that they should be able to pay more quickly.”

The profit reversed the US$3.8 million loss JPS recorded a year earlier when its most efficient power plant went offline. The plant, now back online, aided the company to post a higher gross profit despite falling revenues affected by the oil dip.

Since July, world oil prices dipped some 25 per cent to US$74 a barrel. It resulted in JPS revenues — which include an oil pass-through to customers — totalling US$265 million over the review period compared with US$279 million a year earlier.

“If I could predict where oil would go, then I would be very rich,” said Tomblin. “But [experts] are expecting the price to remain low over the next six months. So I am watching to see what OPEC (Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) does…. We are all [hoping for] lower prices in 2015, which is good for customers.”

OPEC, the influential grouping of oil-producing nations, will meet on November 27 in Vienna, Austria to discuss the relatively quick dip in oil prices since summer amid increasing tensions in the Middle East.

JPS also benefited from keeping operating costs flat at US$49.7 million, while reducing finance costs to US$10 million from US$14.7 million a year earlier.

The energy company is still awaiting a decision from the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) on its application for a structured rate increase afforded under its licence every five years.

“We continue to work with the regulator,” stated Tomblin when asked about JPS’ latest discussions with the OUR.

JPS is owned by Japanese firm Marubeni Corporation, which has a 40 per cent stake; South-Korean Korea East-West Power, 40 per cent; Government of Jamaica at 19.9 per cent; and some 3,000 shareholders holding the remaining 0.1 per cent of the shares.

Last year, JPS secured US$30 million in loans with an additional option of US$15 million from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the lending arm of the World Bank, in furtherance of its capital needs and its push away from fuel oil.