No, this is not more bashing of Duke basketball, Coach K and Zion. These are observations sent along by a veteran of Raleigh’s utility-regulation wars, who shall remain nameless:

The headlines today should terrify anyone who remains a shareholder of Duke Energy because it confirms the utility’s political clout in the state is zero.

Duke was ordered by state environmental regulators to dig up and relocate millions of tons of coal ash at its old power plants, a task of truly staggering logistical and financial consequences. This comes only months after a devastating outcome to the utility’s gigantic rate case, where regulators authorized a portion of Duke’s request and denied rate increases to pay for huge investments in future infrastructure.

Duke’s executives who call the real shots are ruthless energy traders from the Midwest with no regard for relationships with regulators. The company’s executives have little credibility, and they remain shockingly clueless about how it works in North Carolina, whose ratepayers provide a healthy profit for the entire Duke enterprise so it can use those profits to invest in, well, Puerto Rico (that’s another story), and a fancy new office tower for themselves in downtown Charlotte.

Legislative leaders tell insiders the utility is working on major legislation to make it easier and quicker to recover the cost of investments (and the profit associated with them). Nobody who has an election of any kind in the next decade should touch this.

The company’s arrogance, naiveté and lack of political sophistication in North Carolina are a threat to its financial stability. At the legislature this session, it’ll be fun to watch legislators, environmentalists and large electric users extract lucrative compromises from the hapless utility and its incompetent politicos that will further erode the company’s profit margins in North Carolina.

In other words: Sell.