PG&E diverted safety money for profits, bonuses
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. diverted more than $100 million in gas safety and operations money collected from customers over a 15-year period and spent it on other purposes, including profits for stockholders and bonuses for executives, according to a pair of state-ordered reports released Thursday.
An independent audit and a staff report issued by the California Public Utilities Commission depicted a poorly led company well-heeled in its gas operations and concerned with profits over safety.
The documents link a deficient PG&E safety culture - with its "focus on financial performance" - to the pipeline explosion in San Bruno on Sept. 9, 2010, that killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes.
The "low priority" the company gave to pipeline safety during the three years leading up to San Bruno was "well outside industry practice - even during times of corporate austerity programs," said the audit by Overland Consulting of Overland Park, Kan.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/12/BAUS1MOSUC.DTL&tsp=1
Source: San Jose Mercury News
PG&E could face hundreds of millions of dollars in fines stemming from the 2010 San Bruno catastrophe, after a new report Thursday from state regulators accused the company of violating numerous laws governing its natural gas operations.
The report by the California Public Utility Commission's safety division also disclosed that PG&E in recent years has collected more than a half billion dollars from ratepayers for system improvements that were never made or that exceeded the amount of money it was authorized to earn. That finding, from an audit, could make it harder for the utility to saddle its customers with 90 percent of the cost of its $2.2 billion pipeline-renovation plan, as it recently has proposed.
Much of the report repeats previous findings by the National Transportation Safety Board and an expert panel the commission appointed to look into the accident, which killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes. But the disclosure about the audit sparked outrage among some elected officials.
"It is truly unconscionable that PG&E was allowed by the CPUC to steal ratepayer monies that should have been spent on safety and, instead, was put in the pockets of PG&E shareholders," said Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough. "All these monies identified in the audit should be returned to ratepayers, presumably as a credit against the work that PG&E should have done, but didn't."
Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_19731174
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