Editor’s note: This an excerpt from an article by Zach Despart of the Addison Independent. Click here to read the full story.
As regulators sort through the fallout of Vermont Gas Systems’ decision last week to cancel its application for its Phase 2 pipeline and announcement in December of a massive cost hike for Phase 1, opponents of the pipeline warn that both events will significantly raise the burden ratepayers will be asked to bear for the Phase I project.
Some are asking the Public Service Board to revoke the project’s approval.
While the Phase II pipeline, which would have run from Middlebury southwest to the International Paper plant in Ticonderoga, N.Y., was being reviewed by the Public Service Board separately from Phase 1, the paper company had tentatively committed to pay for most of Phase 2 and contribute $31 million to Phase I. When the paper company withdrew from its agreement with Vermont Gas, the utility was left with financing of the Phase 1 project on its own.
The current Phase 1 cost estimate is $154 million, 78 percent more than when the PSB approved the project in December 2013. After Vermont Gas announced the second cost increase of more than $30 million this past December, the Public Service Board decided to ask the Supreme Court, where the case was on appeal, to send Phase I back so it could investigate.