Posted on 05/28/2002 12:58:08 PM PDT by Robert357
In sheaves of responses to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's request for details of trading strategies, nearly all power sellers denied doing anything like Enron-style market manipulations. However, some said they made questionable moves in response to requests from the California Independent System Operator. (free portion ends here..)
Cal-ISO is increasingly taking criticism for allegedly manipulating itw own market for the sake of ensuring reliability.......
In several instances, companies told FERC they did not exactly follow the rules, but their actions were due to Cal_ISO requests. ?On some occasions during the relevant period, [we] scheduled small amounts of excess load to Cal_ISO-assigned, load designations delivery points,? Reliant noted. Also, on 31 days, Cal-ISO-assigned Reliant load to delivery points ?where no physical meter or load actually existed.? The points were used as a scheduling tool to ?sink imports and purchased power so that the associated energy would be available in California.? This reduced prices.
Mirant noted that ?with the knowledge and support of Cal-ISO,? it scheduled load, although there was no load to be had to make up for utility underscheduling.
Duke said it engaged in congestion relief at the behest of Cal-ISO in June 1999. Although Duke said it had no bids on file, Cal-ISO allegedly requested it to submit adjustment bids for use in managing Path 26 congestion.
Well, there you have it, the Democrats are screaming for the FERC and Justice Department to through the book at Enron and one of the parties that was the most active in manipulating the power market was the entity suppose to be responsible for managing the transmission system on a fair and impartial basis, the Cal-ISO.
Based on the way Davis has angered the FERC Commissioners and staff, it should be real interesting to see who they through the book at and if after all Davis' screaming about refunds that FERC mandates the Cal-ISO pay huge fines and refunds along with DWR. It could happen.
When the dust settles, I think that California will be lucky if they don?t have to pay huge fines and if some of Davis appointees aren?t thrown in jail for what they did to manipulate prices.
They aren't allowed to do that, but Davis was in a war with the power companies and he felt it was necessary to use the tactics he was accusing them of.
To nobody's surprise, government bureaucrats aren't very shrewd when it comes to the markets, and they shot themselves in the foot several times. There was a story here last week about Cal-ISO demanding more power than it really needed just to make sure that the power companies could deliver it. When they acquired it, they then sold it for a huge loss out of state. Brilliant.
Yep, it is starting to get so thick all the people that probably were guilty you will need a score card pretty soon. Again, I hope that Feinstein is happy with asking Ashcroft and FERC to throw the book at Enron. I think the book will end up being thrown at the Cal-ISO.
I feel it is far worse for a quasi government body (the Cal-ISO and DWR) to game the market than for companies like Enron. A free market needs to be free of illegal and hidden government control or nobody will want to participate in the market.
-------some background information-----------
(1) CMS's CEO Steps Down Amid 'Round-Trip' Probe Wall Street Journal | May 28, 2002 | Chip Cummins
CMS Energy Corp. said its longtime chief executive stepped down, following disclosures that the energy concern's trading business had conducted large-scale transactions that artificially boosted its trading volumes and revenue.
- - - - -
(2) Now for the latest CEO stepping down from CNN:
Dynegy CEO resigns
Former Enron suitor the latest energy trader to undergo management shake-up
. May 28, 2002: 11:04 AM EDT
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Dynegy Inc.'s shares jumped 5 percent in Tuesday morning trading after the company announced the resignation of company Chairman and CEO Chuck Watson, and also said it had appointed an executive of ChevronTexaco to replace him temporarily as chairman.
- - - -
(3) Documentation that Cal-ISO and DWR were gaming the market price of electricity in California:
- - - - (4) Documentation that Cal-ISO asked Enron to game the market price of electricity in California:
- - - - - (5) Documentation that Sacramento Municipal Utility District may have been involved with AEP to game the market price of electricity in California & that they were talking with Enron about mutual advantages.
------- (6) Did Portland General Electric and PacifiCorp game California power markets unwittingly?
Portland Utilities May Have Aided 'Ricochet' Trading by Enron, Others
Wall Street Journal | May 24, 2002 | Robert Gavin
Two utilities based in Portland, Ore., said they may have unwittingly aided schemes to manipulate electricity prices during the Western energy crisis of 2000.
In filings with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Wednesday, PacifiCorp, a unit of Scottish Power PLC, and Portland General Electric, a unit of Houston-based Enron Corp., said they may have been unknowing intermediaries in so-called megawatt-laundering trades designed to avoid California price caps.
Megawatt laundering, also known as "ricochet" trading, is a practice described in Enron memos, in which power in California was bought at capped prices, moved out of the state, and then resold to California at higher uncapped rates.
Portland General also said it may have aided Enron traders in the so-called Death Star strategy in which Enron scheduled fictitious electricity deliveries on overburdened transmission lines, in order to receive congestion relief payments from the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state's power grid.
Portland General Electric, which serves about 730,000 customers in the Portland metropolitan area, declined to comment and referred inquiries to its corporate parent. An Enron spokesman said the company is cooperating with FERC's investigation into possibly market-manipulation practices during the energy crisis in 2000.
In its filing, PacifiCorp with 1.5 million customers in six Western states, identified about 767 transactions in July through November 2000 in which it would accept power from a customer in California, only to return it them shortly afterward for a small fee.
PacifiCorp officials note that these back-and-forth deals were small, amounting to just 40,376 megawatt hours out of about 63 million megawatt hours traded during this period, and just a tiny fraction of the 45,000 transactions the company conducted.
Initially, PacifiCorp officials said, these transactions appeared similar to deals occasionally struck between buyers and sellers of power to avoid transmission bottlenecks. But as their frequency increased during the energy crisis, PacifiCorp officials became suspicious of megawatt laundering, and stopped participating in such transactions after mid-November.
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Yes, Davis is a bumpling idot, but Davis' heart is not in the right place like Richochet Rabbits was.
32 days and counting to the official bankruptcy of the Late Great State of California.
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Will "the Gray Davis touch" work like "the Bill Clinton touch"? That is, will all his associates be corrupted and destroyed...while Davis emerges unscathed?
Your post out of history was really intersting, especially the numbers that the ISO said was overcharged to California. The big players were Duke, BC Hydro, Dynergy, Reliant, Mirant. Enron was not one of the big players in the market and wasn't significantly overcharging California, at least according to Cal ISO.
Very interesting. Thanks
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