Santee Cooper may object to SCANA-Dominion merger
SCANA's proposed merger with Dominion Energy has a potential new foe: Santee Cooper, the state-owned utility that partnered with SCANA for a decade on a nuclear construction project that fell apart last year.
Santee Cooper filed a motion with the state Public Service Commission late Thursday, seeking to intervene in Dominion's planned buyout of SCANA and its SCE&G subsidiary.
Mollie Gore, a Santee Cooper spokeswoman, declined to say what the state-owned utility would tell the PSC about the proposed marriage of SCANA and Dominion, a Virginia-based energy giant.
"At this point, with the incomplete record before the commission, Santee Cooper has not determined the positions it may take in the proceedings,'' the utility said in a news release.
In an email Thursday night, SCE&G spokesman Eric Boomhower said his company looks "forward to gaining a better understanding of Santee Cooper's position on the issues and how it believes issues pertaining to Santee Cooper could be addressed in the regulatory proceedings.''
Those familiar with the proposed merger and the fallout from the bungled V.C. Summer nuclear expansion project speculated Santee Cooper might be positioning itself to challenge the merger — or at least question parts of the deal that could affect the state-owned power company.
Santee Cooper, a 45-percent partner in the effort to build two reactors at Fairfield County's Summer site, is scrambling to survive in the wake of the project's $9 billion failure. Santee Cooper was critical of the construction project long before it fell apart July 31 but never publicly challenged SCANA, the project's senior partner.
In recent months, Santee Cooper has been sued by its major customers, the S.C. Electric Cooperatives, and been offered for sale by Gov. Henry McMaster.
The state-owned utility also is considering a lawsuit against SCANA.
Intervening in the PSC case could provide Santee Cooper with information that it could find valuable, said Nanette Edwards, acting director of the Office of Regulatory Staff, which helps regulate utilities.
Santee Cooper also could be looking for money from Dominion to preserve the Fairfield County nuclear site, which could be finished in the future. Unlike SCE&G, Santee Cooper has expressed interest in preserving millions of dollars in equipment on the site in case the project one day could be revived.
McMaster wrote SCE&G Wednesday, complaining that the investor owned utility was not preserving the V.C. Summer site. His office applauded state-owned Santee Cooper's intervention in the case.
"The governor has repeatedly called on Santee Cooper to take this step,'' McMaster spokesman Brian Symmes said of Thursday's decision to intervene.
Bob Guild, an attorney for the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, said Santee Cooper likely is trying to protect its interests. Other groups have filed to intervene in the SCANA-Dominion merger without saying why, he said. Guild's clients have their own case before the PSC, seeking to get back money that SCE&G customers paid for the failed reactor project.
"“They just want to be players, I assume,’’ Guild said of Santee Cooper. “It’s obvious, from what we’ve been seeing in internal Santee Cooper documents, they hold SCANA executives responsible for creating the mess and ignoring Santee Cooper warnings that went back years.’’
State Sen. Paul Campbell, R-Berkeley, a former Santee Cooper board member, said, "They're trying to see if there's any money left'' that could help the state-owned utility, which still owes billions for the Summer project.
State Sen. Nikki Setzler, D-Lexington, who co-chaired a committee looking into the nuclear project failure, said he wasn't surprised Santee Cooper has intervened.
"There's always been a question of whether Santee Cooper has rights against SCANA, which they are going to exercise,'' Setzler said.. "Am I surprised that they've petitioned to intervene? No."
Santee Cooper is the state's largest power producer, serving roughly 2 million South Carolinians, most customers of the electric co-ops that buy most of the utility's power.
This story was originally published April 12, 2018 at 7:24 PM with the headline "Santee Cooper may object to SCANA-Dominion merger."