Consumers: Cost or Benefit?

Fortnightly Magazine - June 1 1996
This full article is only accessible by current license holders. Please login to view the full content.
Don't have a license yet? Click here to sign up for Public Utilities Fortnightly, and gain access to the entire Fortnightly article database online.

s Cherry Picking

"If we ignore history, we're doomed to repeat it. And what happened in the natural gas industry is precisely what will happen. The FERC authorized deregulation of the natural gas industry and, as a consequence, today's retail consumers (em meaning residential retail consumers (em are paying more than twice as much for natural gas as the large industrial users.

"I'm looking at Pennsylvania, for example, and the gas companies are selling gas to the industrial users, based on 1994 figures, at $4.03 per thousand Mcf, versus residential at $8.22.

"It will happen [in electric] unless the regulatory commissions do something about it. They could solve that problem by allowing retail wheeling only for residentials, and when they get it on line where it's effective, do it with industrial and large commercial users."

s Customer Transition Charges

"We think all stakeholders should pay. If you're going to have stranded costs, we think they should be shared by the stockholders as well as all the users (em those that exit the system as well as those that stay on. . . . It's hard to draw the line, so we're saying at AARP that all stakeholders should share those costs."

s Retail Wheeling

"Yes, they need it to get lower costs. . . . Retail wheeling conceivably can produce true competition, if you follow it carefully.

"[Customers] don't understand this concept at all, anymore than they understand gas. Let me tell you this right now. If the general public in the United States understood what has happened with the FERC deregulating natural gas and allowing large users to pay half as much as residential consumers, there'd be a revolt. And not even the members of Congress know that. The same is going to be true with electricity.

This full article is only accessible by current license holders. Please login to view the full content.
Don't have a license yet? Click here to sign up for Public Utilities Fortnightly, and gain access to the entire Fortnightly article database online.