An out-of-state company’s $18 billion bid to buy the largest electric utility in Texas could be considered again by state regulators on Thursday.
But the Texas Public Utility Commission already has signaled its opposition once — and given current realities, don’t expect that to change.
At issue is a bid by Florida-based NextEra to buy Oncor, which serves about 10 million electric customers in the north and central parts of the state. Because Oncor is a public utility and a monopoly, any change of ownership must meet regulatory approval.
But late last month the PUC unexpectedly found that NextEra’s proposal to buy the Texas utility was not in the public interest. For the state regulators, their staff and a host of interested parties, the proposed partial dismantling of the Oncor “ring fence” by NextEra became a bridge too far.
That is, the NextEra proposal called for the weakening of several financial covenants that help protect Oncor from any economic instability of its unregulated affiliates. These covenants are known generically as the Oncor “ring fence.”
Two key provisions of the Oncor’s ring fence — that the Texas utility maintain a board that is truly independent from its unregulated parent, and that a clear separation of debt exists between Oncor and its unregulated parent — were lacking in the proposed NextEra deal, according to critics.
“Unfortunately, these are the issues on which NextEra is not willing to budge,” said Donna Nelson, the PUC chair.
Geoffrey Gay, general counsel for the Steering Committee of Cities Served by Oncor, told the Dallas Morning News that he doesn’t expect the NextEra deal to go forward — at least not anytime soon. Mr. Gay said the only way ahead now was for the company to drop many of its key demands, and also to obtain unanimous approval from other involved parties.
“Both those possibilities are so remote that it’s safe to call this deal (over),” he said.
The commission is scheduled to address this issue again during an April 13 meeting.