Published: 3/16/2019 12:00:52 AM

On Feb. 16, William Hinkle of Eversource used his turn to respond to a Monitor piece of mine (Monitor Opinion, Feb. 11).

He dismissed a 2017 economic study I cited titled “Vertical market power in interconnected natural gas and electricity markets” about Eversource and Avangrid’s withholding natural gas pipeline capacity. The authors said, “While the studied behavior may have been within the two firms’ contractual rights the significant impact in both gas and electricity markets show the need to consider improvements to market design and regulation as these two markets become increasingly interlinked.”

But it was the details of the withholdings, the times and locations, that reeked of all the ethics of Enron.

Consumer Advocate Donald Kreis said in October 2017 of the study that Eversource’s “claim of ‘complete fabrication’ amounts to a denial of any wrongdoing or criminal intent – and thus no grounds to pay back any of that $3.6 billion. This begs the question of whether something is in dire need of a fix here.”

In its February 2018 inquiry into it, instead of addressing market design and regulation, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said the study’s findings “revealed no evidence of anti-competitive withholding of natural gas pipeline capacity” and it “would take no further action on the matter.”

But the inquiry followed FERC’s decade of failure to review New England’s transmission reliability project cost overruns for prudence. Its delinquency helped bring the region the highest transmission rates in the country, 81 percent higher than the next highest and an astounding 347 percent increase in transmission costs to PSNH residential ratepayers.

With rates still skyscraping hot, how could FERC then admit it was again derelict in its duty, blind to the implication of the utilities’ withholding natural gas pipeline capacity during the frigid 2013 through 2014 winter?

In my view, Eversource used the withholding to cite the exacerbated price spikes, first, to justify wrapping $418 million for the scrubber project into its Legislature-sponsored divestiture, and, second, to make its Northern Pass case.

TERRY CRONIN

Hopkinton