Free Republic

NEW YORK — Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has agreed to pay $2.4 billion to resolve investors' claims it helped hide losses at Enron Corp., marking the biggest individual settlement since the energy trader collapsed in a massive accounting fraud. The settlement announced Tuesday with the Toronto-based bank — Canada's fifth-largest financial institution and the operator of the securities firm CIBC World Markets — could help compensate investors who lost tens of billions of dollars when Enron failed in 2001. Combined with similar agreements with Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. and others, the settlements have now reached more...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The California Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision Wednesday and ordered election officials to place an initiative that would re-regulate the state's electricity market back on the Nov. 8 special election ballot. The justices, in a 6-0 decision, said the constitutionality of Proposition 80 could be decided after the election if it's approved by voters. They said it was "usually more appropriate to review constitutional and other challenges to ballot propositions or initiative measures after an election" unless there was "some clear showing of invalidity." "At this point," they added, "we cannot say that it's clear...

SACRAMENTO – A Sacramento court ordered another initiative off California's November ballot Friday – an attempt by consumer advocates to re-regulate the state's electricity market. A three-judge panel of the 3rd District Court of Appeal ruled that Proposition 80 was "unquestionably invalid on its face" because it would give broader powers to the Public Utilities Commission. The court said the state constitution only allows the Legislature to increase the PUC's jurisdiction. It would take a constitutional amendment to change that requirement but Proposition 80 would only enact a statute, the justices added. "Without such an amendment, Proposition 80 attempts to...

Sempra Energy said it had awarded nearly $1.2 billion in contracts to build liquefied natural gas terminals in Baja California and Lake Charles, La. Construction will begin soon on the company's proposed LNG terminal, called Energia Costa Azul, 14 miles north of Ensenada, Sempra said. The San Diego company said it expected to complete negotiations this year for the LNG supply to its proposed Louisiana terminal and then would begin building that facility.

SACRAMENTO — A bipartisan citizens' panel Thursday recommended that the Legislature reject Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to create a state Department of Energy, dealing a blow to his plan to reorganize the state's tangled energy bureaucracy. Members of the Little Hoover Commission, which analyzes all state government reorganization plans, said they favored the idea behind the governor's proposal to centralize California's energy policy under a cabinet-level energy czar. The committee, however, voted 7 to 1 against the plan after lawyers from both the Legislature and the attorney general's office questioned the constitutionality of provisions that would transfer some rate-making functions...

ALHAMBRA, Calif. (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday urged Californians to conserve energy this summer while promoting his plan to create a state energy agency. He said he doesn't want a repeat of the power crisis of 2000-2001, which followed the state's foray into deregulated energy markets and led to rolling blackouts and soaring utility bills. "There is no doubt about it that California will face big energy challenges this summer and probably for years to come," said the governor, speaking at the office of the Independent System Operator, which manages most of the state's power grid. "Conservation saves...

Senate says LNG siting should be federal decision 6/23/2005, 7:15 a.m. CT The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has voted to let the federal government override states' objections to the location of liquefied natural gas terminals. Supporters argued that L-N-G imports will help meet a growing demand for natural gas and lower prices. But opponents of the provision, part of a wide-ranging energy bill the Senate hopes to complete this week, said states should get more of a say in locating terminals because of concerns about tanker spills and terrorists. An amendment that would have given governors the...

Nearly five years after blackouts rolled across California, electricity surged back toward the spotlight Monday when the last of eight voter initiatives qualified for November's special election. Like the claims and counterclaims that wracked the state during the 2000-2001 energy crisis, nothing about the electricity initiative is likely to be simple. Sell It Yourself Despite the convenient labels, California never really deregulated electricity when the state Legislature changed the ground rules of the once-monopoly business in 1996. Now, the ballot measure wouldn't really re-regulate, although the consumer group promoting it likes to call it a "re-regulation and blackout avoidance" initiative....

Gov. Schwarzenegger is fighting the good fight, so we can forgive him when he occasionally misfires. His "Million Solar Roofs Initiative" to subsidize photovoltaic (PV) systems is one such error. PV systems convert sunlight into electricity. This is great but for a few problems: the systems are costly; they rarely produce the electricity claimed; and, even with subsidies, PV does not pay for itself. Senate Bill 1 is the legislative vehicle for the governor's initiative. It passed the state Senate on a 30-5 vote with only Republican opposition. The next stop is the Assembly, then the governor's desk. California has...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Plans to build a coal-fired power plant in Nevada's high desert to provide more energy for Southern Californians are opposed by renewable energy advocates and may also run afoul of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's new effort to fight global warming. At a joint public hearing Wednesday by the California Energy Commission and Public Utilities Commission, energy officials were expected to debate whether Schwarzenegger's greenhouse gas reduction goals will impact companies generating electricity outside California. Nevada, where environmental regulations tend to be more lax, already has several power plants supplying energy to California, and there are plans to...

Former Gov. Gray Davis now admits he was unprepared for the 2000-01 energy crisis that sent electricity bills soaring, brought rolling blackouts and ultimately helped bring an early end to his political career. Davis, recalled by voters in an unprecedented move, was replaced by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in October 2003, a year after Davis had won a second term. The former Democratic governor said he erred by buying power at inflated rates during the height of the crisis, but said he acted because he "wasn't willing to risk" sustained blackouts. "Did it turn out to be a mistake? Yes," Davis...

As California’s electricity supply tightens with summer weather ahead, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will send a state-energy-agency reorganization plan to the Legislature next week that critics say favors big energy companies at public expense. The administration maintains it is not out to compromise the public interest, but only to streamline the state’s complicated, multiagency energy bureaucracy and encourage construction of the new electric transmission lines and gas pipelines that energy firms say are needed to keep the lights on in California. “This reorganization improves accountability, focuses the development of energy policy, reduces fragmentation and duplication, and improves communications,” said Joe Desmond,...