More than six months after California regulators approved a comprehensive settlement for the unbundling of Southern California Gas Co.’s intrastate pipeline transmission and storage system, the deal has yet to be implemented, and its prospects are uncertain at best, a SoCalGas official told an industry audience in San Diego Thursday.

One complication comes from the fact that Richard Bilas, lead regulator for the new series of firm tradeable transmission rights, receipt points, storage and balancing requirements at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), abruptly resigned from the commission in March. The newly assigned commissioner, Carl Wood, and CPUC President Loretta Lynch, are not in any hurry to have the decision implemented, according to Jeff Hartman, director of energy markets and capacity products at SoCalGas and its sister Sempra Energy utility, San Diego Gas and Electric Co.

“We think there are three votes (on the five-member CPUC) to move forward, but my ability to forecast the CPUC decision-making is basically nil,” Hartman told the American Conference Institute’s first day of a two-day California Energy Symposium. “It is on the agenda every meeting, but we don’t have the CPUC president or the assigned commissioner in back of it.”

SoCalGas has a proposal for an open season late this summer and implementation in November.

“We were told by the (CPUC’s) energy division months ago that they had a resolution drafted in April, including our proposed implementation schedule. They (the regulators) think they have a better idea, and that is to tell the utilities to go buy capacity for non-core customers. And the utilities have told them not to do that.”

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