Gosh, I hope it's not that high. I'm not sure I ever heard that high of a figure, but anything more than a couple of billion is going to be a budget buster.
Thank you Arnold for working SO hard to, "renegotiate the contracts."
The further problem was that California was suppose to pay its $3 billion to various sources including the Enron bankruptcy court and then file its claims for $1.8 billion to various power marketing companies (some of whom have declared bankruptcy.)
The ALJ didn't want to get his hands dirty in hassling with whether he as a FERC ALJ had priority in settling claims over a federal bankruptcy judge. The various folks who owed and needed to pay money all had their own ideas about who and when they wanted to pay and whether the payments would be net of any bankruptcy claims. A real mess!
To complicate things even further, some of the generating companies were California electric utilities so the "net" California impact was unclear.
Now Woods is saying that no, based on latest bean counting it is looking like California utilities are really owed about $3 billion more thant the original $1.8 billion in refunds. Still not sure if they have figured out who is wihtin Califronia and who is not.
So it is now looking like there may actually (depending on if the companies have any cash or in bankruptcy are forced to pay pennies on the dollars) either no $ leaving California purchasers to the "generating companies" or maybe some money coming back to California. Hard to say.
This might also just be FERC trying to pressure folks to get to the settlement table and cut a deal they can live with. I am not sure that Solomon could come up with a fair settlement on this one.