This article originally appeared as a Gavel to Gavel guest column in the Journal Record on April 16, 2026.
Austin T. Ray – Click to visit profile.
By Phillips Murrrah attorney Austin T. Ray
Most business leaders will never need to parse Oklahoma’s Retail Electric Supplier Certified Territory Act, or RESCTA. But many still have a stake in how it is interpreted. When a major manufacturing, processing, or other energy-intensive project lands in a community, the economic effects rarely stop at the property line. Large projects can create downstream opportunities for contractors, suppliers, logistics providers, commercial landlords, and other local businesses. That is why legal certainty around electric service is not just a utility issue. It is an economic-development issue.
RESCTA generally assigns exclusive retail electric service rights by certified territory, while recognizing a limited exception for certain large-load facilities in unincorporated areas. Recent Oklahoma Supreme Court cases focused on that exception and, more specifically, on two practical questions that have gained importance as modern transmission access and large-load development have tested the fit of an older statute: (1) who may lawfully serve the load, and (2) when a project qualifies for the exception. For developers, lenders, and business owners evaluating major rural projects, those are threshold questions. Uncertainty on either front can affect site selection, infrastructure planning, timing, and cost long before a facility opens.
On the territorial question, the law shifted between 2023 and 2025. In Oklahoma Gas & Electric Co. v. State ex rel. Oklahoma Corp. Comm’n, 2023 OK 33, the Court held that RESCTA permitted OG&E to serve a qualifying large-load customer through third-party transmission lines. But in Oklahoma Gas & Electric Co. v. State ex rel. Oklahoma Corp. Comm’n, 2025 OK 15 (People’s), the Court revisited the issue and overruled that decision to that extent. At least as interpreted by the Court in 2025, RESCTA does not permit a retail supplier to use third-party transmission lines to reach into another supplier’s certified territory under the large-load exception. In Oklahoma Electric Cooperative v. State ex rel. Oklahoma Corp. Comm’n, 2025 OK 60, the Court applied that rule while preserving existing service arrangements because People’s operates prospectively only.
That is the current legal framework, but perhaps not the final word. The opinions reflect a genuine interpretive dispute over whether a statute enacted in a different transmission era should be read to address modern access to third-party lines. That makes this more than a narrow utility fight. It highlights a broader tension between legacy statutory language and present-day infrastructure realities—one the Legislature may eventually choose to address more directly.
The Court separately clarified qualification for the exception in OG&E Co. v. Oklahoma Corp. Comm’n, 2025 OK 43. There, the Court held that “connected load for initial full operation” means the total nameplate rating of connected electrical equipment, not merely actual early usage. That gives project planners a more objective front-end test when evaluating whether a facility falls within the exception. That is the broader takeaway: for major projects, electric-service certainty can influence whether investment moves forward and whether surrounding businesses and communities share in the benefit.
About the author:
Austin T. Ray is a litigation attorney who represents individuals and both privately held and public companies in a wide range of civil litigation matters.
CONTACT: atray@phillipsmurrah.com | 405.606.4774
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