MERCER: Federally sanctioned electricity extortion finds a roost in state
May 7, 2012 at 3:01 am in The Daily Republic
A government folly is playing out in our state’s Capitol over a wind electricity project that a group wants to build in Clark County.
Continue Reading
C’mon Bob, lets dig a little deeper before trying to sensationalize this story. Oak Tree is a group of local SD farmers not some big, bad foreign corporation. Northwestern signed a legally binding agreement back in Feb 2011, but now wants out, well, because they think they can. They contracted based on current price s at that time. Energy demand is down, so now they want a lesser price. Let’s keep this perspective – natural gas prices went from $15.38 MMBtu to around $2.50 today. Northwestern received a 3.3% natural gas increase from the SD PUC back in Dec 2011. Gee, Northwestern’s costs for NG has dropped by 85%, plus they received an additional 3.3% price increase. Why hasn’t my natural gas cost from Northwestern dropped? And why doesn’t Northwestern want to buy power generation in our state? Do they just want to suck money out of it?(Now that’s a story!)
Lastly, the statements such as ” Oak Tree cannot guarantee..” and “If these contigency costs…” are normal and common in energy contracts. Similar language is used in every industry nationwide. You’ve seen this before, every attorney places CYA clauses in every contract. It’s standard operating procedure.
Like or Dislike:
5 
0