Hubris: Clean Line's Michael Skelly and the End of the Plains and Eastern Project...

Another joint update from Ali and Dave...

THIS = Michael Skelly:

See the smoldering ruins behind Michael Skelly over there? The twisted steel and scorched concrete trailing behind him? Those are the bridges he burned in Arkansas. Well, rhetorically, of course... because Michael Skelly never actually built anything here, except a list of enemies.

There’s a difference between innovation and hubris, reality and fantasyland. Maybe you need a bit of both to pull off the project of Skelly’s dreams, but somewhere along the line… between attempting to circumvent state authority and bluffing about local tax payments, Clean Line Energy Partners, LLC, managed to make their project so toxic no one seems to want anything to do with them.

To recap the events of recent weeks: Plains & Eastern, Clean Line’s regulatory crown jewel and the only of its projects to be fully (if questionably) permitted, is DEAD in Arkansas. Hallelujah. Don't take our word for it, though. Let's look at a little evidence:

Clean Line Withdraws from TVA's Interconnection Queue:

Just a little background: Clean Line has three points of interconnection for it's project - at Southwest Power Pool (SPP) in Oklahoma for its proposed converter station at the beginning of the line, at Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) for its proposed converter station in Pope County, Arkansas, and at Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for its proposed converter station in Shelby County, Tennessee. All three are vital to the Project's ultimate success. As you can see in the following screenshot, Clean Line has withdrawn its position in TVA's interconnection queue.

What's missing from the second screenshot (TVA's current interconnection queue)? #219 and #220 (Clean Line). Now, Skelly will likely attempt to say that the position can simply be revived later, but that's not really how the process works according to TVA:

3.5 Withdrawal.

The Interconnection Customer may withdraw its Interconnection Request at any time by written notice of such withdrawal to TVA. In addition, if the Interconnection Customer fails to adhere to all requirements of this LGIP, except as provided in Section 13.5 (Disputes), TVA shall deem the Interconnection Request to be withdrawn and shall provide written notice to the Interconnection Customer of the deemed withdrawal and an explanation of the reasons for such deemed withdrawal. Upon receipt of such written notice, the Interconnection Customer shall have fifteen (15) Business Days in which to either respond with information or actions that cure the deficiency or to notify TVA of its intent to pursue Dispute Resolution.

Withdrawal shall result in the loss of the Interconnection Customer’s Queue Position. If an Interconnection Customer disputes the withdrawal and loss of its Queue Position, then during Dispute Resolution, the Interconnection Customer's Interconnection Request is eliminated from the queue until such time that the outcome of Dispute Resolution would restore its Queue Position. An Interconnection Customer that withdraws or is deemed to have withdrawn its Interconnection Request shall pay to TVA all costs that TVA prudently incurs with respect to that Interconnection Request prior to TVA’s receipt of notice described above. The Interconnection Customer must pay all monies due to TVA before it is allowed to obtain any Interconnection Study data or results.

TVA shall (i) update the OASIS Queue Position posting and (ii) refund to the Interconnection Customer any portion of the Interconnection Customer's deposit or study payments that exceed the costs that TVA has incurred. In the event of such withdrawal, TVA, subject to the confidentiality provisions of Section 13.1, shall provide, at Interconnection Customer's request, all information that TVA developed for any completed study conducted up to the date of withdrawal of the Interconnection Request.

There goes Clean Line's proposed end point.

Clean Line Withdraws from MISO's Interconnection Queue:

This is the one we've been waiting for. A withdrawal from MISO's interconnection queue removes the Project's midpoint (the Pope County, Arkansas, converter station connection point) from the equation. Go here and search for "J319." The evidence:

There goes Clean Line's proposed mid-point.

Long story short: No connection point in Tennessee and no connection point in Arkansas = NO PROJECT IN ARKANSAS. This is fantastic news, Arkansas landowners. The multi-year fight has been unnecessarily taxing and expensive, but this is looking good for you.

In spite of Skelly’s many, many protestations, the simple fact is, absent the Oklahoma portion of the line, whatever Frankenmonster he intends to “someday” cobble together is NOT Plains & Eastern. The Project, as pitched, hyped, and sold to the U.S. Department of Energy, no longer exists, whether or not Skelly believes he could somehow manage to get back into line at the TVA or MISO.

Do Skelly, et al, (meaning those few scraps of leadership left in his company) really not comprehend what they’ve done by selling Oklahoma to NextEra? Who gave this man their investment money? And for goodness sake, why?

Why a company that had the hubris to assume they could jump the appellate queue all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court… a company that never misses a chance to appeal an unfavorable decision, would assume dedicated landowners would stop with a district court ruling is beyond us. This company spent years, YEARS, holding Arkansans hostage. You think we’re going to let the first judge be the end all? Not likely, princess.

No, Mr. Skelly, you will not be allowed to sit in Houston and twiddle your thumbs until a magic buyer comes along. You will not be allowed to hold onto your “permit” with one hand while selling off pieces of your company with the other. You will not be allowed to fail to file updates with regulatory agencies and simultaneously claim the project is still alive. You will not be allowed to do that to so many Arkansans.

Now, the ten-ton elephant in the room falls on NextEra: What about our good friends in Oklahoma? What are your intentions there, NextEra? We think you owe Oklahomans an explanation about what your true intentions are. Are you actually proposing a different transmission line? Maybe to compete with AEP's "Wind Catcher" project? If so, where might that project stop in Oklahoma? Again, these landowners deserve an explanation from you... sooner, rather than later.

And what about the reporters who continue to give this company so much deference? Don't you feel like it's time to do a little bit more digging and put this to bed for landowners in Arkansas and Oklahoma? It's time for you to stop handling these guys with kid gloves, isn't it?

So, go back to your firehouse, Michael Skelly… maybe do a little more glory hounding and dream up your next snake-oil scheme. With the exception of greeniacs like Dr. Smith (BTW, I’m sure Bill Johnson is shaking in his boots. *eyeroll*), everyone can see right through you.

Michael Skelly is now living in a world filled with hubris and fantasy. We'll update you again with more when we know more.

Does Clean Line not love Arkansas anymore?

Well, it’s happened. Clean Line doesn’t love Arkansas anymore. “The markets have shifted," Mario says. First, we got friend-zoned (remember when they were just going to use us as an doormat for their extension cord to Tennessee?), then loved us no matter how much we didn’t want it (baby, I’m gonna give you all the taxes-not-really-taxes-voluntary-payments and jobs you can handle), and now Clean Line is moving on and trying to sell (kind of like multiple interested parties always said they would) this debacle of a project to American Electric Power (AEP) to "help" facilitate their proposed "Wind Catcher" project. We could go on for a while about what exactly "Wind Catcher" is, but this article by Jeffery Tomich of E&E News very effectively summarizes what it is and gives a brief summary of what Clean Line is now seeking:

Clean Line did disclose an unusual offer to a potential customer last week in an Oklahoma regulatory filing. 

In testimony filed at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the company suggested that the Plains and Eastern project provide the transmission for Public Service Co. of Oklahoma's piece of American Electric Power Co.'s Wind Catcher project.

The $4.5 billion AEP project would be able to provide wind energy to its utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas from a 2,000-MW wind farm being developed in Oklahoma and 350-mile high-voltage transmission line (Energywire, July 27).

Clean Line supports the Wind Catcher project and its ambitions to bring utility customers access to low-cost wind energy in the same way that utilities such as Xcel Energy Inc. and MidAmerican Energy Co. are doing, Hurtado said.

"It just happens that we're a number of years ahead on our project compared with the [transmission line] that they proposed back in July," he said. "We think our project can provide a lower risk and ultimately a lower-cost option to move that power that they want to serve their customers."

Clean Line, which has been an evangelist for the benefits of DC technology for long-haul transmission projects, even said it's willing to use alternating-current technology if that's what AEP wants to do.

"We didn't want the discussion about the benefits that this project brings to be focused on a technology discussion of AC versus DC," Hurtado said.

So far, Clean Line's very general proposal to play a part in Wind Catcher is just that.

Read that again. One more time. I had to read it four times to grasp exactly what Mario was saying here. And then I did a little research because I like to know what Mario and crew are up to. ;) In my search, I was able to locate the Wind Catcher docket at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC). By the way, OCC, you really should update your system so it can be more easily searched. Here's a small tutorial about how to view the whole docket:

1) Click Here. After the page loads, do this:

2) After the results have loaded, do this:

3) Viola! You now have access to the Wind Catcher docket at the OCC. I'm a pretty simple person, but this took me a decent amount of time. It shouldn't have, OCC. You should be able to search for terms such as "Clean Line" or "AEP" to bring up results. If the case number is unavailable or difficult to find, the "Search" function is pretty much useless.

Now that your chin is on the floor and you've learned how to access the Wind Catcher docket: click here and read. It is, at times, vomit-and-laughter inducing, but it's also revealing. Let's examine a little bit of that testimony, shall we? It's really important.

1) The "market has changed" and there is currently no demand for the Plains and Eastern project east of Oklahoma:

Translation: Clean Line STILL has no customers. This is something we've been trying to say for a long time, but it's pretty satisfying to see it finally coming from the horse's mouth directly. Something else is also revealed:

2) Clean Line is more than willing to re-route the project away from its current route and terminate the project at Tulsa. A "second phase could be built at a later date if market demands warrant such action."

Let that sink in for a moment. This has always been about HVDC, how great that technology is, and how this project is designed to "deliver the best wind energy to the mid-south and southeast" through a converter station in Pope county, Arkansas, and Shelby county, Tennessee. It's almost like Mario would have you believe everything that's happened for the last seven years didn't actually happen. Now, Mario is essentially saying: "Arkansas and the southeast United States, PSSSSH!, this thing is GREAT for Oklahoma. Did I mention this is GREAT for Oklahoma? We will do anything if you'll just get this thing off our hands, AEP. Please - BUY THIS. No, but seriously, we'll do ANYTHING. We'll even change it to AC, move the route so it stops at Tulsa, and we don't even care if we own it. In fact, we'd probably just rather sell it":

This is a fundamental change, folks. New territory. In fact, Mario made it sound so much like the project was pre-designed and destined for Oklahoma that he mentioned the word "Oklahoma" 119 times in his testimony. Arkansas got the short end of the stick with 2 mentions. You're hurting our feelings over here, guys. I could go on and on, but there are a couple key things to take away from this: 

1) Clean Line is proposing to do something altogether different than it has been for the past 7+ years with its Plains and Eastern project. It should be both frightening, as well as reassuring that Clean Line will literally do ANYTHING at this point to salvage something out of this project. Their desperation is becoming harder and harder to hide.

2) If you are a landowner that has been impacted by this debacle and are interested about where it is going, it is imperative that you follow the Wind Catcher docket at the OCC. Why? Because AEP is scheduled to respond by the 22nd of this month. We'll find out very soon if this is some off-the-wall proposal by Clean Line to AEP that will be laughed away, or if AEP is actually seriously considering Mario's sales pitch... which could almost completely re-write the route of this project and what it intends to accomplish.

If someone at AEP is reading this, I can give you a simple analogy about what Clean Line represents:

I am a car guy. Clean Line is what I would call a "fifty foot car." If you've ever purchased a used car before, you can relate. Let's say you are driving along the road, and you see a car for sale that catches your eye. It looked GREAT when you drove by. So, you decide to turn around and have a look. When you start looking it over, you notice that the paint is nice and shiny, but there's hail damage on the roof. You look at the tires and they're worn out. You climb underneath and notice that there are oil leaks everywhere, and it's obvious that things have been leaking for a long time. You open the doors and look inside, and the interior looks pretty nice, but there are cigarette burns on the seats and it smells like someone just smoked a pack of cigarettes in it. Then you look at the odometer and it reads 200k miles... just right at that point where, if you don't spend a lot of money replacing some core things, you're going to HAVE to spend more money changing those things later, likely after it's left you stranded on the side of the road in the bad part of town somewhere a couple hundred miles from home.

Now, let's say you make it past all of that because the current owner is offering you a killer deal. So, you decide to take her for a test ride! You start it up and it has a rough idle and it smokes a little bit. You put it in reverse and the differential makes a loud "click." You put it in drive and take off and the transmission doesn't shift properly. It's making a lot of noise, and the steering doesn't feel right. You make it back to where you started and you have to make a fundamental decision: Do I really want this car? Is the amount of work and money I am going to have to put into this car going to be worth what I am paying for it? Am I ready to accept all of the problems that it has, despite my better judgement telling me to RUN? You get the point.

AEP: Clean Line Energy Partners is a "Fifty Foot Car." She looks pretty good at fifty feet away but, upon closer inspection, she's really just an eight year old car that is rife with problems... past, present, and future. It would probably be a better decision to buy a newer model because this one is worn out. And, on top of all that, she's been owned by a few jerks her whole life. We'll all find out within the next few days if AEP is considering taking Clean Line for a test drive, or maybe deciding to RUN and look for a newer model. Unless, of course, the case is dismissed altogether as the Oklahoma AG has requested. Only time will tell.

Clean Line: Arkansas has been wanting to break up with you for a loooooong time now. We're beyond ready to call you an "ex." 

Mario Hurtado: Here's what I (and many other landowners) think of your quote...

Furthermore, the Plains and Eastern team has received many questions from landowners and other stakeholders in Oklahoma about the Wind Catcher project. The team has been asked if Plains and Eastern can be involved or assist in the Wind Catcher project given that Plains and Eastern has a construction-ready, long-haul transmission project that runs from the Oklahoma Panhandle to the east and has acquired easements on more than 750 parcels in Oklahoma.

I am calling BS.