Ball called Warnick's remarks "entirely inaccurate," charging that the committee had entered negotiations with Questar behind closed doors.

"I have attended virtually every open meeting of this committee since the ninth of March," Ball said. "There was nothing on the agenda. There was no discussion in open meeting that the committee was about to change its position."

At one point in the meeting, Hammon even went so far as to say he would have changed his vote in favor of Leslie Reberg, who replaced Ball as executive director. Hammon voted against Reberg after Huntsman forwarded her nomination to the committee.

Last year, the PSC allowed Questar an opportunity to convene a series of technical conferences in an attempt to prove that the processing plant was necessary and that the plant's costs should be passed to customers.

According to filings with the PSC, experts hired by the consumer committee concluded that a safety issue existed.

"Frankly, the discussions between our experts and the utility's experts facilitated and made possible a final end to what has been a very long legal dispute," Warnick said. "It saved a lot of people, including ratepayers, money and time and expense and has probably achieved an outcome that is more favorable to their interests than if this had been endlessly pursued in litigation."

The dispute reaches as far back as 1997, when quantities of coal-seam gas reached near crisis proportions, resulting in a decision by Questar to build a processing plant to remove a portion of carbon dioxide from the gas. From 1999 to 2004, the plant's processing costs were passed on to customers, amounting to $25 million.

But in 2003, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that the PSC had "erred" in passing the processing costs on to customers "by failing to hold Questar Gas to its burden of showing that the increase was just and reasonable."

That decision ultimately resulted in the PSC ordering a $29 million refund to customers — which included $4 million in accumulated interest — amounting to about $37 for the typical customer.

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E-mail: danderton@desnews.com