Editor’s note: The island week’s Lisa Zahner and the Press Journal’s Larry Reisman have written with great indignation and righteousness about the Florida Municipal Power Agency’s hedging losses. Reisman even called for the breakup of the FMPA. Curiously, neither Zahner nor Reisman has spent so much as a drop of ink writing about Florida Power & Light’s hedging losses over the past 13 years. 

In April of this year, InsideVero.com carried a story revealing the FPL had reported to the Florida Public Service Commission hedging losses of $3.6 billion. As it turns out, that number was low. But whether FPL’s losses on fuel hedging were $3.6 billion, $4.2 billion, or as much as $1 trillion, those losses would likely never be reported by the Press Journal or the island weekly.  The one-sided and biased reporting on Vero Beach’s utility story by the island weekly and the Press Journal is shameful. Expect more of it, though, as the Vero Beach city council election approaches. 

FPL customers have overpaid by $4.2 billion for natural gas since 2002

SUSAN SALISBURY/PALM BEACH POST

Florida Power & Light Co. customers have paid $4.2 billion too much for natural gas in the last 13 years because the utility buys most of the fuel through hedging, rather than on the open market.

Associate Public Counsel Erik Sayler told the Florida Public Service Commission Thursday that the hedging losses, which have cost customers of the state’s four investor-owned utilities $6.1 billion since 2002, should be specifically addressed. Hedging allows Juno Beach-based FPL and other utilities to lock in the price of natural gas in long-term contracts, but prices on the open market would have been a better deal. Continue reading...