A division of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission is moving ahead with a request of regulators to require five major utilities in Oklahoma to reveal more details about their February 2021 storm costs. It is considered a move to make the utilities more transparent in what they are asking of the commission.
The Public Utilities Division is asking the Commission to have Oklahoma Natural Gas Company, Oklahoma Gas and Electric Company, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, CenterPoint Energy Resources Corp. and Summit Utilities Inc. to “publicly disclose certain documents and information related to the extreme weather emergency of February 2021.”
The utilities have asked the commission for securitization approval to spread their extensive storm costs over long periods of time. But some consumer groups have complained that the utilities have not revealed enough financial details in defense of their requests.
The request filed by the Commission’s Public Utilities Division asked for the total amount each of the utilities paid to natural gas providers for the natural gas commodity, transportation services, transmission services, storage related expenses, purchased power and other related expenses by type and provider.
“Providing the above-described information in this cause allows the general public to view summary information for this historic weather emergency on the Commission’s website in one, easily-accessible repository and in a uniform format,” stated the PUD request.
“The information being sought in this Cause is not anticipated to give an unfair competitive advantage to providers of these services as this weather emergency has been considered an anomaly and should not negatively impact any future requests for competitive bids.”
The AARP Oklahoma is one group that has not agreed to some of the securitization requests of some of the utilities, arguing residential customers are bearing too much of the cost load and the utilities have not been totally transparent about their expenses.
In opposing efforts by Oklahoma Gas & Electric, AARP Oklahoma State Director Sean Voskuhl said his group advocated to ensure only prudent and reasonable costs are passed on to consumers to limit the rate increase to residential customers.
“We are fighting to ensure OG&E takes financial responsibility for its actions leading up to and through the weather event,” said Voskuhl.
“OG&E knew this weather event was likely. OG&E did not use all of its gas in storage and kept a high number of generation units offline for maintenance, all contributing to the spending frenzy.”