UIL pulls the plug on PGW

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

December 4, 2014 | 5:46 PM

UIL Holdings has decided to end its agreement to buy Philadelphia Gas Works for $1.86 billion dollars. The deal fell through in November after Philadelphia City Council failed to hold a hearing, and approve the sale.
“Unfortunately, we had no choice but to terminate our efforts in the City of Philadelphia to acquire the PGW assets,” said James P. Torgerson, UIL’s President and Chief Executive Officer in a release. “We are extremely disappointed that no ordinance was introduced to approve the acquisition and we’re equally disappointed that we were not afforded a hearing to present the facts regarding our bid proposal. Philadelphia and the City’s gas customers would have benefitted from our accelerating the pace of pipe replacement and from our management of the PGW assets.”
The Connecticut based company had until the end of the year to terminate the deal.