The difference is public use. The electric cooperative and its suppliers are public utilities, which is a legal designation. They supply electricity to any member of the public who requests it without discrimination and at the same rate. This is the obligation of a public utility. Cimarron Link is a merchant transmission project. It has no customers in Oklahoma (or elsewhere, aside from a promise from the federal government). Cimarron Link will auction off its transmission service to the highest bidder (if there are any bidders -- a reason the federal government stepped in to backstop this unnecessary project). Cimarron Link is a voluntary supplemental transmission project that has nothing to do with reliability, economics or public policy. It has not been found needed by your regional grid operator, Southwest Power Pool. It is a speculative venture where Invenergy thinks if it builds this supplemental, for-profit project that voluntary customers will want to use it and will sign contracts that financially support it. However, that didn't happen, so our federal government has stepped in to sign a contract for up to half of the capacity so that the project can be built without customers. The feds have no intention of actually USING the project. They think they can resell the capacity to some imaginary company after the project is built. If imaginary company wanted this transmission capacity, it would sign a contract now.”