PG&E’s stock rocketed higher on Monday after the embattled utility unveiled a plan to extricate itself from a bankruptcy quagmire that surfaced amid the company’s mountain of debts and liabilities linked to a series of catastrophic wildfires.

Shares of the utility soared on waves of optimism by big players on Wall Street that PG&E was close to an exit from its $51.69 billion bankruptcy, along with PG&E’s own assessment that it could conclude its court case to reorganize its finances by a June 30 deadline imposed by the state government.

PG&E jumped 13.5 percent, or $2.05 a share, to finish at $17.26 on Monday. The company’s shares continued to surge in after-hours trades.

“The company will emerge from Chapter 11 as a reimagined utility with an enhanced safety structure, improved operations, and a board and management team focused on providing the safe, reliable, and clean energy our customers expect and deserve,” PG&E Chief Executive Officer Bill Johnson said in a prepared release.

PG&E’s latest proposal awaits approval from Gov. Gavin Newsom, however.

Newsom has harshly criticized PG&E in multiple instances. As recently as Jan. 22, the governor pilloried a new bankruptcy plan that the utility had proposed at the time.

The latest plan quickly came under fire from a long-time PG&E skeptic, state Sen. Jerry Hill, whose district in parts of Santa Clara County and San Mateo County includes San Bruno, the scene of a 2010 fatal natural gas blast that PG&E caused.

A disastrous combination of PG&E’s flawed gas-system records and shoddy maintenance, as well as lazy supervision by the state Public Utilities Commission, caused an explosion that killed eight and destroyed a quiet residential neighborhood in September 2010.

“There is nothing in this new plan that guarantees PG&E can get the resources needed to move PG&E from a third-world utility to a 21st-century utility,” Hill said in an interview Monday.

PG&E tottered into bankruptcy in January 2019 after its finances buckled in the aftermath of a series of fatal and destructive Northern California wildfires in 2015, 2017, and 2018, most of which were caused by, or directly linked to, PG&E’s equipment.

The governor also has threatened a takeover by the state of California if PG&E fails to craft a plan and a strategy to create a transformed utility that is to Newsom’s liking.

“After PG&E’s decades of mismanagement and neglect of its critical infrastructure, failed efforts to improve its safety culture and its disruptive implementation of public safety power shutoffs, the company that emerges from bankruptcy must be poised for transformation,” Newsom wrote in a recent state budget message.

Newsom vowed that the governor’s office and the state Legislature was prepared to pave the way for a state takeover of PG&E if necessary.

“If protecting Californians’ interests and ensuring the necessary transformation requires further intervention, including a state takeover of the utility, the administration will work with the Legislature to secure necessary statutory changes,” the governor said in the budget message to state lawmakers.

The PG&E plan sketches out new and expanded roles for a company chief risk officer and a chief safety officer. Both of these executives would report directly to the company’s CEO.

PG&E also vowed to “refresh” the respective boards of PG&E Corp. and its main utility subsidiary, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. It wasn’t immediately clear, however, whether PG&E would jettison its entire board, a provision that Newsom had previously demanded.

Separately, State Sen. Scott Weiner of San Francisco was preparing legislation on Monday that would clear the way for a state takeover of PG&E.

Newsom, in Hill’s view, has staunchly resisted pressure from major Wall Street hedge funds such as Knighthead Capital Management, The Baupost Group, Viking Global Investors, and BlueMountain Capital that are seeking to influence the outcome of the bankruptcy proceeding.

Hedge fund behemoths have gobbled up big chunks of shares of PG&E and have attempted to influence the bankruptcy proceeding in a gamble to harvest major profits if they can secure a reorganization plan that favors mega investors.

“I applaud the governor for his leadership and steadfastness against this corporate hedge fund that owns PG&E and is trying to take advantage of California again,” Hill said.

One forbidding prospect that looms over the endgame in the PG&E bankruptcy case: PG&E ratepayers and California taxpayers might be stuck holding a costly bag while Wall Street feasts on profits through the purchase of PG&E shares at cheap prices.

That unsettling outcome was on the mind of Mark Toney, executive director with The Utility Reform Network, or TURN, a consumer group. Toney warned that the financing scheme PG&E has included as a key foundation of its bankruptcy exit could saddle customers with upfront costs for the money package.

“The payments by ratepayers up front are certain to happen, but it’s uncertain that the savings will occur on the back end,” Toney said.

In the past, it’s been tough to verify that PG&E ratepayers received all of the savings, or avoided all the rate increases, that they were promised at the outset of a proposal, according to Toney.

“The biggest concern we are looking at is we don’t want a reorganization plan that creates so much debt for PG&E that they are not stable enough,” Toney said. “Then PG&E will have to declare bankruptcy all over again.”