PG&E to face criminal charges in trial linked to San Bruno blast

The PG&E Gas Can Man is either a ghost or the secret sauce needed to prove domestic terrorism. 
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Nancy McFadden PG&E COS now employed by Jerry Brown
Howard V.  Golub who has a son my sons age tutored by his classmate – my son whose friend was Ryan Fuchs killed in Danville. 
Peter A. Darbee lives 1.3 miles from accident scene where my car was totaled in Lafayette.
Michael Peevey whose stupidity was thinking they could rigged or stage accidents to shift burden to Rate Payers. 
 
 
By George Avalos, gavalos@bayareanewsgroup.com
POSTED:   06/13/2016 03:29:00 PM PDT | UPDATED:   118 MIN. AGO
SAN BRUNO -- In a federal trial that could bring closure to San Bruno residents devastated by the 2010 pipeline disaster, PG&E faces an array of criminal charges linked to the explosion that killed eight people and demolished a Peninsula neighborhood.
Jury selection for the trial, in which PG&E faces 13 criminal counts, is scheduled to begin Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The charges include one count of obstruction of a federal probe into the blast and 12 counts that it violated pipeline safety regulations. If convicted on all 13 charges, the utility giant could be fined up to $562 million.

File photo: Crews load an abandoned segment of pipe that was once part of the gas line that exploded in San Bruno last year.in San Bruno , Calif., on Friday , July 29 , 2011. (JOHN GREEN/Staff archives)
Investigators believe the deadly explosion was caused by a lethal combination of negligence, poor record keeping and lazy oversight. Federal prosecutors are likely to contend in the trial that PG&E's hunger to harvest a bumper crop of profits from ratepayers caused the company to neglect the safety of its customers.
"PG&E's willful decisions not to maintain records, conduct proper pipeline assessments and otherwise comply with federal pipeline safety regulations were part of a corporate culture of prioritizing profits over safety," federal prosecutors wrote in papers filed in November with the federal court.
PG&E has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
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"The San Bruno explosion was a tragic accident, and we have demonstrated our accountability," said Greg Snapper, a PG&E spokesman. "We have seen no evidence that PG&E employees intentionally violated the Pipeline Safety Act or obstructed justice."
City officials in San Bruno are eager for the long-delayed trial to begin.
"We believe PG&E is guilty of a dereliction of its duty to protect the citizens of San Bruno and customers all over their service area," San Bruno Mayor James Ruane said in an interview with this newspaper. "We hope this trial will bring about justice and transparency, which PG&E has not opened up to."
San Francisco-based PG&E has undertaken numerous steps to upgrade and repair its vast web of natural gas pipelines, including the construction of a gas-control facility that serves as a high-tech nerve center for its pipeline system.
Still, company officials did not answer the question directly when asked recently why, if PG&E has demonstrated accountability for the Sept. 9, 2010, disaster, the utility did not plead guilty to the criminal charges.
"It is one thing to accept responsibility for the obvious facts of an explosion and the damage and destruction that was caused," said San Bruno City Manager Connie Jackson. "But it is another thing entirely to accept true responsibility for the negligence that caused the system to fail and create the disaster."
State regulators in April 2015 hit PG&E with a $1.6 billion penalty for causing the explosion, the largest financial punishment ever imposed on an American utility.
"It is rare for corporations to actually go on trial," said Peter Henning, a professor of law with Wayne State University in Detroit. "PG&E may feel they have already gotten a black eye in public. Sometimes corporations draw a line in the sand and tell the prosecutors to prove their case."
Among the high-profile witnesses who are expected to be called to bolster the prosecution's case is former PG&E Chief Executive Peter Darbee, the company's top boss in the years before the explosion and when the blast occurred. Darbee received a $34.8 million severance package when he left the company in 2011.
Prosecutors also intend to call Leslie McNiece, a former PG&E executive, as a witness. McNiece is expected to testify she encountered opposition and pushback from top company executives in connection with her PG&E-ordered task of improving the utility's record keeping on its pipelines.
Eight current or former PG&E executives have received court-ordered immunity, according to case documents filed by the U.S. attorney's office. Darbee is not getting immunity.
Brian Cherry, a former PG&E regulatory executive who received immunity, will testify about the utility's statements to the PUC and the National Transportation Safety Board regarding an array of issues, including company policies about gas pipe pressure and pipeline records.
William Hayes, a PG&E gas operations executive who was a company representative for the NTSB probe into the explosion, will testify about the utility's policies regarding when it would test for problems in older pipelines -- and what PG&E told the NTSB about those policies.
"This is at the heart of the obstruction charge," prosecutors said in court papers.
The original indictment against PG&E came in April 2014. The trial was initially set to begin in March, but a flurry of motions by PG&E's defense team delayed the start of the trial several times.
"There have been a lot of tricks and a lot of delays by PG&E," said state Sen. Jerry Hill, whose San Mateo County district includes San Bruno. "Almost six years after the explosion, people will finally see some justice in this, and the families may be able to go on with their lives."
Contact George Avalos at 408-859-5167. Follow him at Twitter.com/georgeavalos.