Consumers should pay $1.2 billion for PG&E pipeline fixes, state judge says
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Customers should pay more than half the cost of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s nearly $2.2 billion pipeline improvement program, but the company ought to suffer a five-year profit loss for its "imprudent management" before the San Bruno disaster, a state administrative law judge said Friday.
PG&E wanted its customers to pay 84 percent of costs of its multiyear effort to inspect and replace pipelines whose safety was cast into doubt by the 2010 natural-gas explosion and fire in San Bruno that killed eight people.
Friday's draft ruling by administrative law Judge Maribeth Bushey, however, would mean customers would have to pay about 55 percent of the $2.18 billion sum. The judge's draft ruling, which must go before the five-member state Public Utilities Commission for approval, says PG&E should pay a larger chunk of the cost than it proposed because the company's mismanagement allowed its natural-gas pipeline system to deteriorate.
... Bushey's ruling would also slash the guaranteed rate of return the company would normally reap for safety-related spending from 11.35 percent to 6.05 percent for five years. She cited the company's "long-standing avoidance of sound, safety engineering-based decision-making in favor of financially motivated nominal regulatory compliance."
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Big-bill-to-customers-for-PG-E-upgrades-3943780.php
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