News Stories
Sponsored by Earth Etch. Regulatory insight and compliance solutions for today’s energy markets.
OPC Files Letter In Support Of DCG’s Comments On AltaGas’ Response To Show Cause Order
Re: In the Matter of the Merger Application of AltaGas Ltd. and WGL Holdings, Inc.
From Letter:
[ *** ] OPC shares DCG’s view that a series of Commission orders on AltaGas’ failure to meet Term 5 obligations requires the statutory maximum penalty of $5,000 per day. As DCG notes, if AltaGas fulfills its Term 5 obligation by December 31, 2024, as it now predicts, a $5,000 per day penalty would total $2.754 million, an amount well below any of the District’s Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) previous suggestions on an adequate penalty. Therefore, no offset for the Company’s purported good faith efforts is warranted. Moreover, AltaGas’ proposed penalty scheme that decreases over time fails to reflect the gravity and duration of its breach of Term 5; therefore, by imposing the maximum statutory penalty, the Commission will advance its stated enforcement policy that any penalty must be so significant that the penalty does not become an alternative to compliance.
In addition, consistent with DCG’s recommendation, OPC urges the Commission to place parameters around what projects can count towards fulfilling AltaGas’ Term 5 obligation under its newly proposed SREC Purchase Agreement. Specifically, if the Commission is going to allow these projects to count towards satisfaction of AltaGas’ Term 5 obligations, then the Commission should conduct at least as much due diligence on the arrangement as it did previously given that the Company’s latest Term 5 quarterly report shows fundamental differences between the newly proposed projects and previous ones.
