Mississippi Power Co.’s $6.7 billion Kemper County power plant is being investigated by the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.
Estimated costs of the project and the expected date that service may begin are being examined. The Mississippi Public Service Commission, which regulates telecommunications, electric, gas, water and sewer utilities, said Mississippi Power Co. disclosed the investigation in its financial report required by the SEC for the first quarter of 2016, which ended March 31.
This investigation may fuel more controversy for the project that has been strongly criticized by a variety of groups — and staunchly defended by others involved with its planning and construction — for the past several years.
The state commission said Friday it was aware of the federal commission’s investigation.
“This Public Service Commission will continue to monitor the Kemper (integrated gasification combined cycle) Project and will fully examine all relevant issues in due course and take the appropriate actions to ensure that the ratepayers are treated fairly,” according to a statement released by the state agency.
The Southern Co. branch said in its filing that it believes the inquiry is focused primarily on “periods subsequent to 2010 and on accounting matters, disclosure controls and procedures, and internal controls over financial reporting associated with” Kemper, the Associated Press reports.
“As this is an ongoing investigation, please understand that we cannot provide details beyond what we have already provided,” Mississippi Power Co. spokesman Jeff Shepard said in a statement. “While we cannot predict the ultimate outcome, as we have said in our disclosures on this matter, we do not expect the investigation to have a material impact on the financial statements of either Southern Company or Mississippi Power.”
Mississippi Power Co. will spend another $61 million on the power plant, bringing its total cost to more than $6.7 billion, the company told the Associated Press April 26.
Although the facility has run on natural gas since August 2014, new cost overruns result from Mississippi Power pushing back the completion date for the entire project by an additional month to Sept. 30, the Associated Press said.
“We continue to anticipate the entire Kemper project to be placed in service during the third quarter of 2016,” said Cindy Duvall, spokesperson for Mississippi Power Co., told Mississippi Today.
An extension of the plant is designed to convert lignite, a type of coal, into a gas that will help create electricity in a process that has not been used previously.
Before certification by the Public Service Commission, the plant was scheduled to start generating power from coal in 2013. Once certified, the plant was then scheduled to start generating power in 2014.
While the natural gas portion of the plant began operating that year, harsh weather and other delays kept the extension from being completed, Shepard previously said. Other issues at the plant later included difficulties operating several rotary valves/airlocks for unloading coal and gasifier refractory issues at high temperatures.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.