Business Notebook

Santee Cooper CEO Lonnie Carter on Monday told the Columbia Rotary Club he is in favor of more natural gas pipelines coming into South Carolina.

Carter said a pipeline now in Georgia could be extended into South Carolina, as well as a future pipeline that would reach from West Virginia down into North Carolina to Lumberton along I-95.

Across the country, utilities like Santee Cooper are switching to natural gas. Controversies have grown as some property owners in South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia have organized to protest their land possibly being take for new pipelines. The governor of Georgia and other leaders there are opposing the extension of a pipeline from Jacksonville, Fla.

Santee Cooper, a state-owned utility, serves more than 2 million customers in the state, either directly or through cooperatives.

BUSINESS BRIEFLY

▪  The average price of gasoline in Columbia has dropped to $2.35 per gallon, down 3.8 cents in about a week, the gas price website GasBuddy.com said Monday. The website firm surveys 350 Columbia outlets daily.

▪  The S.C. Public Service Commission is to hold a hearing Tuesday on South Carolina Electric & Gas Co.’s latest request for a rate increase based on the rising cost of financing the construction of its two new nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer plant in Fairfield County.

From Staff and Wire Reports.