No. And No.
With unanimous 5-0 votes Wednesday afternoon, Missouri's Public Service Commission denied several motions to rehear Noranda Aluminum's request for a reduction in the rates it pays Ameren Missouri for electricity, and denied Noranda's complaint that Ameren has taken in more money than commissioners authorized in December 2012 when they set the utility's current rate schedules.
"Based upon the evidence that was put forward, Noranda did not meet its burden of demonstrating that Ameren's current rates are unjust and unreasonable," PSC Chairman Robert Kenney said during the commission's agenda meeting, before the final vote was taken. "The evidence that they adduced didn't present a complete and accurate earnings picture."
Ameren Missouri is the state's largest regulated electric utility, with more than 1.2 million customers.
Noranda operates an aluminum smelter in New Madrid that is Ameren's single largest customer.
On Feb. 12, Noranda, joined by about three dozen individual consumers, filed two complaints with the PSC.
The first asked the commission to lower all of Ameren's electric rates because a study of the company's "surveillance reports' - a quarterly look at earnings, expenses and some other issues for the previous 12 months - showed Ameren was collecting payments at a higher level than the 9.8 percent return on equity the PSC authorized when setting the current rates that went into effect on Jan. 1, 2013. Noranda's complaint said those rates no longer were just and reasonable as state law requires.
But Commissioner Daniel Hall said Wednesday that one paragraph in the order, near the end of the 20-page document, "is the sum and substance of our holding."
That paragraph begins: "The cost of service study presented by the Complainants essentially stops at the end of 2013 and does not take into account the additional costs Ameren Missouri has already incurred in 2014 for ongoing capital projects and payment of solar rebates."
Hall told colleagues, before the vote: "You can't take one year of surveillance reports and deduce overearnings without looking at a host of other factors - and, when you look at those other factors, Noranda cannot show overearnings."
The second complaint sought a roughly 25 percent cut in the rate Noranda currently pays Ameren - which already is the lowest rate of any of Ameren's customers - with an accompanying 2 percent increase in the rates for all other customers.
The aluminum company said it needed the rate reduction to keep it viable. Without it, Noranda said it might have to close the New Madrid smelter, which is one of only nine left in the United States.
After the hearings ended in that case this summer, the Missouri Office of Public Counsel - required by law to represent Missouri consumers in PSC rate cases - proposed a compromise, with a 16 percent Noranda rate cut and a 1 percent increase for other customers.
The commission rejected that complaint on Aug. 20, and said the proposed compromise was too late to be part of that case. However, the PSC suggested the parties could continue talking about it as part of Ameren's new rate increase request that must be decided no later than next May.
The rehearing motions denied Wednesday had asked the PSC to take another look at that compromise.
"We are disappointed with the PSC's decision to not consider a compromise proposal supported by the representatives of all customer classes," Noranda spokesman John Parker said Wednesday evening in an email. "Still, because affordable power is critical to the long-term health and prosperity of any aluminum smelter, we remain committed to reducing the rate New Madrid pays for electricity."
Parker said Noranda "will vigorously pursue" the Public Counsel's proposal during Ameren's new rate case.
But because Ameren's new rates likely wouldn't go into effect until next June, he added, "It will likely be too late for the 125 to 200 employees whose jobs will be lost based on the PSC's decision."