Despite the province encouraging smaller utilities to merge and get bigger for a few years now, Entegrus is still more interested in buying up Hydro One assets and customers.
Entegrus President and CEO Jim Hogan tells BlackburnNews.com the Chatham-Kent utility wants to focus on the customers in its own region.
"Entegrus has been open to partnering with other utilities and looking at some opportunities. We're willing to talk to some of our neighbours, but it's not a priority," says Hogan. "We are interested in purchasing the assets and the customers that are here in Chatham-Kent so that they can all be served by Entegrus."
Municipalities are pushing the province to allow local power providers a chance to buy Hydro One assets as part of the government's plan to sell-off the utility. Those assets and customers aren't on the table right now.
"They'll have their new board in place and they'll look at business opportunities, so there may be an opportunity to buy some customers and buy some assets in our region and it's something that we will look further at," says Hogan.
Local officials pushed the issue again at the AMO conference this week in Niagara Falls.
