OKLAHOMA CITY – One state Corporation Commissioner is a staunch supporter of PSO’s Fort Sill Energy Center project. So are a state transportation executive and a state legislator from Lawton.
The three-member commission divided 2-0 Monday in authorizing Public Service Co. of Oklahoma to bill its customers for expenses it expects to incur if it builds a proposed $117.9 million emergency electricity generation facility at the Army post immediately north of Lawton. However, the commission limited the amount that PSO could charge its customers in advance for construction of a stand-alone natural gas-fired power generation unit.
Commissioner Bob Anthony refused to cast a vote on the commission order, which was drafted in large degree by Commissioner Dana Murphy. “I am not supporting this order,” Anthony told Murphy and Commission Chairman Todd Hiett. Instead, Anthony filed a separate opinion.
“Time will tell if today’s ‘limited’ approval meets the need,” Anthony wrote. “To enable Fort Sill to strengthen its strategic energy resilience using secure on-site facilities required by Army Directive 2020-03, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission should have issued a timely order acceptable to both the U.S. Department of Defense and Public Service Co. of Oklahoma.”
Anthony, who rose to the rank of captain in the Army Reserve, expressed his support for the Fort Sill Energy Center (FSEC), saying it should be approved in the interest of national security. He also said the post is obviously important to the Defense Department because the Pentagon located two combat training centers at Fort Sill. One is the U.S. Army Field Artillery School, and the other is the Air Defense Artillery School, which previously was located at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas.
ENERGY SECURITY ‘CRITICAL’ FOR DOD, ARMY
Michael McGhee, acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Energy and Sustainability, advised the Corporation Commission that the U.S. Army “strongly supports” PSO’s proposed FSEC.
“The security of military installations, including energy security, is a critical priority for the Department of Defense and the Army,” McGhee said. Federal law mandates that the DoD “must take active steps to achieve energy security and energy resilience at military installations.”
“I’m just not sure the Army and PSO will accept the Corporation Commission’s order, which put a lot of contingencies on their approval,” said Lawton businessman Gene Love, chairman of the Oklahoma Transportation Authority and a former member of the Oklahoma Transportation Commission.
“I didn’t see any reason why they didn’t approve it as presented” by
PSO, Love said. “I sent the commission a comment about how important this project is to southwest Oklahoma and to Fort Sill.”
So did state Rep. Rande Worthen, R-Lawton. Fort Sill is “incredibly vital to the community,” Worthen wrote in a letter to the Corporation Commission.
The Energy Center would “add clean energy back to the [power] grid” and is “of vital importance to the strength of Fort Sill and the economic development of southwest Oklaho- ma,” wrote retired U.S. Navy Capt. James Taylor, director of FISTA (the FIRES Innovation Science & Technology Accelerator) in Lawton.
A project of the magnitude of the FSEC “would provide a significant number of jobs and infuse money into the Lawton and southwest Oklahoma economy throughout construction of the facility,” Worthen wrote in his letter to the commission.
Construction of the proposed Energy Center would be “an investment in the future of Fort Sill,” southwest Oklahoma “and our state as a whole,” Worthen said.
It also would “showcase the interest and value” of Fort Sill, since “under the current presidential administration, there is some concern that the military is not a high priority and potential downsizing of military bases may occur,” the legislator wrote. Because Oklahoma has multiple military installations, he said, “it is not unreasonable to consider that one of our military bases may be discontinued.”
Love concurred. “This project is important because anything we can do to improve the infrastructure for Fort Sill is important in terms of BRAC,” the federal government’s Base Realignment and Closure process. “There will be another BRAC down the line,” Love predicted.
FORT SILL: $2B IMPACT
It was noted during a previous Corporation Commission hearing that while PSO customers would pay for the Fort Sill energy project, all Americans potentially could benefit from the project in the event of a crisis because the Army post would remain in operation. Therefore, Matt Horeled was asked, shouldn’t “the entire country” be responsible for “supporting the needs of the military?”
“I think we all do, with our taxes,” said Horeled, PSO’s regulatory and finance vice president.
Kyle Vazquez, a Corporation Commission attorney in the Public Utility Division, asked Horeled whether it’s “equitable to have a small subset of Oklahoma citizens – PSO customers – subsidize the cost of a project at the request of a national entity?”
Fort Sill is the third-largest single-site employer in this state and has a $2 billion economic impact on Lawton and Oklahoma, Horeled said. “Those aren’t benefits for the whole federal government. Therefore, I think there’s a strong public policy argument for supporting this project in Oklahoma.”