For the past couple of years the proposed Kinder-Morgan gas pipeline through southern New Hampshire has created protests and political posturing galore, but it was sheer business that killed it: Not enough power companies signed up to buy gas under the long-term contracts that pipelines need. Power plants tend to operate on 5-year contracts, while pipelines use 20-year contracts – that has long been a problem for the proposal.
Here’s Dave Solomon’s quick take on the issue in the Union-Leader.
Return to the Concord Monitor
The Business Industry Association (BIA) has lobbied heavily for the pipeline projects with their Energize NH campaign. Do you know what the BIA’s position was on the Coal Plant Scrubber back when it was first proposed in 2005?
I do not – that was a complicated back-and-forth dance as I recall, although memories fade …
I found this on the DuPont website and Gary Long seems to have been Chair of the Board of the BIA back around that time, “In a September 2008 letter to the PUC, then-President of PSNH Gary Long took credit for crafting the scrubber law and spearheading the effort to get it passed. Public records show that PSNH spent more than $130,000 on two outside lobbying firms in 2006 when the scrubber law was passed, and over $250,000 on three outside lobbying firms in 2009 as part of the effort to defeat legislation that would have required additional study of the scrubber project before it proceeded. PSNH thus played a key role in getting its “mandate” passed by the Legislature and then ensuring that it was not changed.”