COMMENTARY

MARK SCHUMANN

“Indian River Shores 32963” reporter Lisa Zahner’s primary assignment seems to be criticizing Vero Beach officials. One of her most outrageous attacks of late was on efforts to renegotiate the city’s multi-year wholesale power agreement with the Orlando Utilities Commission.  Had negotiators been unsuccessful in securing major concessions from the OUC, city leaders were prepared to consider bids from other wholesale power providers, including, quite possibly, Florida Power & Light.

All of these efforts Zahner criticized as “hedging.” But, what constituted hedging? Assuming Zahner fills up the gas tank in her car when it is near empty, she is, in a sense, betting that the price of gas will not go down the next day, unless, of course, Zahner burns through a tank of gas a day.

Even FPL, the favorite, can-do-no-wrong, utility of Zahner and her editors, hedges. And sometimes, even FPL’s hedges and ventures do not turn out so well. Take for example the utility giant’s recent venture into natural gas fracking. According to reports filed with the Florida Public Service Commission, FPL is forecasting a $5.8 million loss on $191 million the PSC allowed the utility giant to extract from customers to fund its fracking gamble.

FPL’s adventure into fracking, funded by its customers and not its stock holders, was a move approved by the PCS. The PSC, of course, is the same regulating body local utility activists like Glen Heran and Steven Faherty argue should regulate Vero Electric.

PSC members are appointed by the Legislature and the governor, all of whom receive millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the state’s investor-owned utilities, including FPL.  This system ensures a regulating body friendly to private utilities, which explains why a Tampa Bay Times columnist once described the PSC  as “a confederation of yes men and women.”

Several years ago, after the PSC declined to approve a $1 billion-plus rate increase for FPL, the utility giant, whose president, Eric Silagy, was at the time heading the company’s lobbying efforts, managed to persuade the Legislature to fire two commissioners who dared to vote against the requested rate increase.

A report on FPL’s latest misadventure appeared earlier this week in the Tampa Bay Times, a publication far more credible than the island rag for which Zahner writes. Given that this story is unfavorable to FPL, it is not likely to appear in “Indian River Shores 32963,” or in the “Stuart Press Journal,” whose publisher is married to an FPL executive involved in the company’s effort to acquire Vero Electric.

FPL’s fracking investment is a money loser so far

William R. Levesque/Tampa Bay Times

Florida Power & Light belittled critics who opposed its precedent-setting plan to charge customers for a $191 million natural gas investment in Oklahoma.

“Flawed assumptions, contradictions and even invented facts pervade their arguments,” FPL told state regulators on Dec. 12.

Turns out the flawed assumptions might be FPL’s own. Continue reading…