Free Republic

We’ve all been had. The bottom has long since fallen out of the key group that master-minded the Kyoto Protocol credit scheme, but nobody seemed to have joined the dots. It all began with the flight of Canadian Maurice Strong’s Earth Council from Costa Rica as noted by the National Post’s Peter Foster in May, 2004. With no fanfare, the Earth Council landed in CH2M Hill’s Consumer Road Toronto office towers. The Costa Rican government has been pursuing the Earth Council for payment of U.S.$1.65 million, for the wrongful sale of a tract of land it imprudently donated to the...

Powerex, a wholly owned subsidiary of B.C. Hydro in Canada, expressed outrage last week over California Attorney General Lockyer's latest lawsuit seeking US$850 million in refunds from Powerex for power deliveries that kept California's lights on during the 2000/2001 power crisis. “It is frankly the height of bad faith for California to seek to welch on its contracts and demand money back, when it still owes Powerex more than $280 million for the power that was delivered during 2000/2001,” said Doug Little, vice president, Powerex. “We responded to the entreaties of the California government in their time of need, and...

Enron Corp. and at least two other power sellers combined to profit by using false information to resell extra power during California shortages in 2000, according to internal Enron memos.THE TWO MEMOS, co-written by an Enron attorney and an outside counsel, detail a system in which Enron’s trading unit requested power on behalf of the company’s retail customers in California that wasn’t actually needed. The memos call it ” ‘dummied-up’ load from EES,” or Enron Energy Services, the retail unit where Army Secretary Thomas White was then vice chairman.Enron’s trading unit obtained the power from utilities outside California that couldn’t...