Junk plant Vogtle and The Southern Company: "Rig Ship For Collision".

update Sept 7

The Southern company's stock price has been on a steep decline this week. The minority owners are trying to bail. One bails and the project is over. Friday the stock declined 3.12% on really heavy volume. Looks like lots are fearful news might come out before the market opens.    

***When this project collapses, I believe the ratepayers will be paying the full bill on the plant for the next forty years. That is why everyone is so desperate to get this thing completed. The feds loaned the Southern company about 11 billion dollars for this project. So if the project fails, you will get no electricity from the plants and still pay what they spent on construction.

But the southern company might regret getting federal loan guarantees. I think in hindsight there is going to be significate corruption and coverups going on. There will be federal felony charges over this. I wonder if the rate payers will be off the hook with all the loans and cost of the failed construction project if systemic fraud, coverup and corruption are involved with the project.

But I would never under estimated the political connections and fraud of the Southern company.

Remember the Southern's stock price is down 10% since the recent PSC decision to continue the project... 

In light of the blue wave overtaking the house and senate in a few months, both plants would never had a chance but for the corrupt and lying southern republican extremist ideology overtaking the region. You know, the house and senate going to the democrats and the also the Georgia governorship. We need a gigantic investigation over Vogtle and Summer. A kind of political debridement to clean out the corruption debris throughout the south. I call our southern states as our US breakaway territories for their hatred of the US government and our federal regulatory system...ie, clear laws, codes and standards.     

Hmmm, I wonder if the weak kneed Dems will have senate and house hearing over the Summer and Vogtle projects. The Dems need to cleans our this this terrible wound with hearing. The Dems are even more indebted to the big nuclear utilities than the republicans. 

My plan to finish this project is for the Southern company and the Summer plant to eat the total cost of the plants. Make them pay the price and put executives in jail for all this corruption and lying. For the good of the nation, have the utilities turn over the plants to the feds at no cost. Then have the feds finish the construction project. Make a TVA like agency for the four plants. Can you even imagine how cheap this electricity would be to the consumers and business? Maybe after a decade, then sell the plants to the private market.             

Fate of Vogtle Nuclear Expansion Hinges on Minority Owners

08/22/2018 | Aaron Larson

On August 8, Georgia Power announced that its revised capital and construction cost forecast for its share of the Plant Vogtle expansion project had increased from $7.3 billion to $8.4 billion, based on a revised cost-to-complete estimate from Southern Nuclear. The news was softened somewhat by Georgia Power’s declaration that significant construction progress had been made on Units 3 and 4 since Southern Nuclear assumed the responsibility for project management following Westinghouse’s bankruptcy in 2017.

Nonetheless, Georgia Power is not the only company on the hook for cost increases; there are three other co-owners of the project. Georgia Power holds a 45.7% stake in the Plant Vogtle expansion, while Oglethorpe Power Corp. (OPC, 30%), MEAG Power (22.7%), and Dalton Utilities (1.6%) hold the remaining shares.

According to The Bond Buyer website, both OPC and MEAG could face bond rating downgrades due to the increased cost estimate for Vogtle. In an August 13 post, Bond Buyer reported, “Fitch Ratings placed its A and A-minus ratings on MEAG’s bonds on Rating Watch Negative Friday, affecting $5.17 billion of outstanding debt. Oglethorpe’s A-minus rating on $3.9 billion of outstanding obligations was also placed on Rating Watch Negative.”

The Vogtle cost increase has not been kind to Georgia Power’s ratings either. According to The Florida Times-Union, a Jacksonville-based newspaper, “Moody’s Investors Services issued a downgrade to Georgia Power’s rating, saying the increase comes just eight months after utility regulators signed off on the previous round of increased cost estimates.”

In August 2017, OPC’s Board of Directors approved a $7.0 billion budget that included a contingency most-recently valued at about $490 million. After Georgia Power announced the new budget forecast, OPC issued a press release in which Mike Smith, the company’s president and CEO, said, “The need to adjust OPC’s budget to complete Plant Vogtle 3 and 4 to account for the recently announced increases will be muted for OPC and its member [electric membership corporations], due to a conservative contingency that we imbedded in our existing budget of $7.0 billion.”

However, the OPC statement also said the company was “still analyzing the need to rebuild its contingency.” It suggested the budget could increase by 5% to 6%, assuming a contingency similar to the amount announced publicly by Georgia Power.

Additionally, OPC said it was “performing its due diligence under the Project Adverse Events (PAEs) within the co-owner agreement resulting from the new budget forecast and Georgia Power’s decision not to seek rate recovery for these amounts. A vote on these items is anticipated late in the 3rd Quarter of 2018.”

A post on the Seeking Alpha website written by Michael Wald, a self-employed research analyst based in Georgia, suggested MEAG was “facing a rebellion” from JEA, a Florida utility contracted to purchase power from the Vogtle expansion. The Times-Union reported that JEA’s 20-year purchase-power agreement with MEAG stipulates that JEA will pay even if the Vogtle reactors never produce power. It said no cap exists on how high JEA’s obligations could go based on the continued increases in the cost of constructing the reactors. Wald wrote, “JEA is demanding that either the construction project be abandoned or that the contract between the utility and MEAG be canceled.” Furthermore, Wald surmised that if MEAG canceled the contract with JEA, it would have a difficult time covering its costs for the Vogtle project.

Southern Co. CEO Tom Fanning was essentially asked during the company’s second quarter earnings call what would happen if a member of the joint ownership group chose not to continue the project. Fanning responded, “Yeah, so, the technical answer there is that the project would be deemed to be cancelled, I believe. And then, of course, you could take a variety of different paths beyond that. But the technical answer is, if you don’t get the 90% vote, the project is cancelled. Then you have to figure out how or whether to proceed beyond that. There is no prescription per se beyond that action. Of course, we could all negotiate—whatever—but that would also require Public Service Commission approval and a variety of other things.”

A vote by the partners is expected in late September