Free Republic

WASHINGTON – Despite the political furor caused by revelations of Enron Corp.'s apparent manipulation of California electricity prices, energy experts said the state's poorly designed power market was ripe for schemers. State officials were warned that such tactics were likely when they created the system in 1996, energy analysts said. "People who do a lousy job designing markets get lousy results," said Richard J. Pierce Jr., a regulatory expert at George Washington University Law School. "Most (of the Enron tactics) would not work elsewhere." Gov. Gray Davis and other California officials have acknowledged flaws in the state's power deregulation plan,...

In a hearing closely watched by California politicians, federal energy regulators on Wednesday warned Nevada utilities seeking to force renegotiations of deals struck during the energy crisis that they "bear a heavy burden."Meeting in Washington, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission refused to accept, at least for now, the argument of Nevada utilities that their long-term power contracts should be overhauled because they were signed at a time when Western power markets were dysfunctional and manipulated by power sellers. California has made similar arguments in support of renegotiating deals struck here at the height of last year's electricity crisis.

WASHINGTON – Federal regulators yesterday ordered hearings into whether California's power crisis unfairly inflated the cost of some long-term power contracts and whether the contracts should be modified. The move, which affects hundreds of contracts negotiated by utilities in Nevada, Washington and California, buoyed California officials. They have asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to cancel or modify some of the $43 billion in contracts the state struck with power providers during the crisis, when prices were far higher than they are now. Although the state's case was not part of FERC's order yesterday, a spokesman for Gov. Gray...

SACRAMENTO -- Through complaints to the federal government and a mobilized cadre of lawyers, the state of California is trying to shed some of the long-term power contracts tying it to much higher than market rates. When he made the deals last year, Gov. Gray Davis called them a force to stabilize the state's volatile energy market. Later, however, the state began trying a variety of tactics to poke holes in those contracts and get a better deal. But that is happening in a tenuous utility environment in which many companies are wallowing in Enron-related accounting problems and trying...

<p>San Francisco, April 3 (Bloomberg) -- California regulators plan to vote tomorrow on the revenue that PG&E Corp., Edison International and Sempra Energy utilities will receive this year from nuclear power plants and other generating stations they own.</p> <p>Under the plan proposed by a California Public Utilities Commission administrative law judge, PG&E's Pacific Gas & Electric, the state's largest utility, will receive $2.88 billion, Edison's Southern California Edison will get $3.79 billion and Sempra's San Diego Gas & Electric will receive $466 million.</p>

California officials yesterday threatened to terminate a controversial $7 billion electricity supply contract with Sempra Energy because the company failed to construct a promised power plant near Bakersfield. Attorneys for the California Department of Water Resources, which signed the contract with Sempra, told Sempra yesterday it failed to make promised efforts to construct the 300-megawatt plant and thereby missed an April 1 deadline to have it operational. They cited what they called Sempra's "apparent lack of candor" regarding the project. The state is demanding Sempra make "commercially reasonable" efforts within 60 days to get the Elk Hills plant online...

California will wait at least two months longer than expected for a decision on billions in refunds it has requested from electricity suppliers, according to a recent decision from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The decision from a FERC administrative law judge is now expected sometime in the fall, rather than in August. The delay was caused by difficulty in obtaining information regarding power sale prices during the crisis from the California Independent System Operator, which oversees grid operations in the state. Gregg Fishman, a spokesman for the ISO, said the data include a very large number of transactions,...