Dominion Energy says its offer to merge with a struggling South Carolina utility holding company remains on the table despite a forceful declaration Tuesday by the governor there that he wants ratepayers to stop footing the bill for a failed nuclear project that saw its costs balloon by $2.5 billion.
That provision — utility customers continue to pay off some of the expenses of the V.C. Summer project — is a crucial piece of the nearly $15 billion SCANA Corp. merger deal for Dominion, which is offering to write off about $1.7 billion in project costs and pay off the customer costs in 20 years instead of 50.
In a letter to the South Carolina General Assembly Tuesday, Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, cited an audit report released last week by the South Carolina Office of Regulatory Staff that found that suspending the ability of SCANA’s subsidiary, South Carolina Electric and Gas, to continue to collect about $445 million a year from ratepayers stemming from the Summer construction is “unlikely to force SCE&G into bankruptcy.”
