BY BOB ANTHONY
Another winter storm is in the forecast. Will Oklahoma utility customers get hammered, cheated and fleeced again? Less than five years after 2021’s Winter Storm “Uri” was falsely described by regulators as a “100-year storm,” forecasts indicate 2026’s “Fern” might be similar.
Uri resulted in $5 billion of ratepayer-backed bonds payments for OG&E, ONG and PSO customers – that’s a debt of $1,800 to $4,000-plus each for over a million Oklahoma households.
Will the utilities properly stock up and prepare this time, or will they once again pass through historic natural gas and purchased power prices without telling residential gas and electric customers what staying warm during Fern is really costing them?
In 2021, two Corporation Commissioners insisted they had no authority to investigate price gouging or market manipulation surrounding Oklahoma’s highest-in-the-history-of-the-nation natural gas prices, and that ratepayers just had to pay up. So much for their constitutional duty to “supervise, regulate and control” monopoly public utility companies.
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission’s 2-1 decisions to allow the utilities to audit themselves after Uri are currently being appealed at the Oklahoma Supreme Court. [See CU-122861, CU-123021 and CU-123348.]
The two OCC commissioners who voted to declare every dollar of OG&E, ONG and PSO’s $6 billion of 2021 fuel costs “fair, just, reasonable and prudent” – another decision being challenged at the Supreme Court [CU-122991] – are still on the commission today. And the same Attorney General who failed to cross-examine witnesses about fraud, market manipulation or lawful audits and prudence reviews in 2021 is representing ratepayers again.
Will anything be different in 2026?
We can only hope that lessons have been learned, and that those responsible for holding utilities accountable will follow the law and do their duty this time. Otherwise, I forecast higher customer bills and more Supreme Court challenges.
Oklahoma ratepayers deserve honesty and transparency – from their utility companies and their elected officials. Will they get it? Time will tell.
Republican Bob Anthony spent 36 years on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission before term limits forced his departure in January 2025.
