King Canute of Albany

The difference is, the real King knew he couldn’t overrule the basic laws of nature, and Cuomo doesn’t.

Cuomo orders national Grid to provide natural gas to new customers; gas it doesn’t have, because Cuomo stopped the pipeline project that would have brought it into NYC.

The Public Service Commission, the state body that licenses and oversees public utility companies, announced Friday that National Grid must provide service to customers or else face “millions of dollars in penalties.”

Previously, 1,157 customers had been denied service due to National Grid’s moratorium on all new gas hookups, announced in May.

The gas company alleged it cannot provide new gas service hookups because plans for the Williams Pipeline were nixed, and current supplies are waning.

The project would bring a new supply of natural gas from New Jersey into New York, if approved.

The Public Service Commission said they have the authority based on a section in Public Service Law that says if a gas company is unable to meet the needs of reliable service to customers, the state has the power to step in. ….

Come has stopped very effort to bring new supplies of natural gas into the state — in fact, Con Ed has also stopped hooking up new customers in Westchester County because of lack of supply — and has ordered the shut down of the nuclear power plant at Storm King, which supplies 25% of the region’s electrical power. Having done all that, he is now stamping his feet, denouncing utility executives as thieves and threatening to take the companies over and have the state run things; presumably, just as well as it runs its public housing projects.

Soon, the only source of gas in New York will be that issued by Cuomo himself. If I were a New Yorker, I’d be laying in blankets.