Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California, armed with what it calls hard, new evidence of rampant power market manipulation, handed federal regulators on Monday the names of about 60 energy companies it alleges were behind the state's 2000-2001 energy crisis. Loretta Lynch, a member of the California Public Utilities Commission, told Reuters a 1,000-page final report on the crisis filed Monday at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission names "almost 60 companies that participated in gaming our energy market." The crisis, triggered by a badly flawed attempt to open the electric industry to competition, cost California billions of dollars, bankrupted the state's...

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...