Free Republic

Twenty-six energy companies with business before the state donated nearly $10million to Gov. Jerry Brown and the California Democratic Party over the past eight years — donations that often were made within days or weeks of winning favors. That’s the contention of “Brown’s Dirty Hands“ a report released Wednesday by the Santa Monica-based public interest group Consumer Watchdog. [snip]The report alleges that Brown and his operatives have used the California Democratic Party as “a political slush fund” to receive contributions from unpopular energy companies in amounts greater than permitted to his candidate committee. The group has logged its report as...

SAN DIEGO – Sempra Energy proposed Monday to more than double capacity at its liquefied natural gas terminal under construction in Mexico, strengthening its position in the race to build the first such plant on North America's Pacific coast. Sempra is building in Mexico at a time when rivals seeking permission in California are stumbling over opposition from environmental and NIMBY – “not in my back yard” – groups. The expansion plan is a response to “significant interest we have received from a number of potential natural gas producers and marketers,” said Darcel Hulse, president of Sempra's LNG unit. Sempra...

ENSENADA, Mexico (AP) - In late 2003, Sempra Energy's bid to build the first liquefied natural gas terminal in western North America was in deep trouble. Plans to import gas from Bolivia sparked a popular uprising that killed dozens of people and toppled the government there. Today, Sempra is leading the race. It turned to Indonesia for the gas, and is building a $1-billion plant on Mexico's pristine coastline, just 50 miles south of San Diego. The terminal, to be completed in early 2008, will be a key fuel source for California homes and businesses for decades to come. The...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 1 - America's corporate chieftains would prefer that Enron just go away. But four years after the company's ignominious collapse, Enron's former top executives are about to head to a climactic criminal trial later this month, serving as a reminder that changes in the behavior of many American companies have been more muted than many once expected. Despite an array of new and expensive laws and regulations that were adopted to tighten corporate oversight after the wave of scandals earlier in the decade, serious accounting problems continue to trouble publicly owned companies. In the last year, a record...

SAN DIEGO - At a critical point in Sempra Energy's $23 billion antitrust trial, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office threatened to file a separate lawsuit intended to leverage a settlement that would mean tens of millions of dollars in fees for Lockyer's longtime political ally and friend Tom Girardi and others on the legal team, lawyers and sources close to the case said. Girardi, his Los Angeles law firm Girardi & Keese and its employees contributed more than $260,000 to Lockyer's political campaign between 2001 and 2004 and gave him gifts, including plane trips, sports tickets and $325 in...

Just heard on LA County Fire frequency that 1 hour blackouts have been instituted....not sure whats up

Sempra Energy said it had awarded nearly $1.2 billion in contracts to build liquefied natural gas terminals in Baja California and Lake Charles, La. Construction will begin soon on the company's proposed LNG terminal, called Energia Costa Azul, 14 miles north of Ensenada, Sempra said. The San Diego company said it expected to complete negotiations this year for the LNG supply to its proposed Louisiana terminal and then would begin building that facility.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Plans to build a coal-fired power plant in Nevada's high desert to provide more energy for Southern Californians are opposed by renewable energy advocates and may also run afoul of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's new effort to fight global warming. At a joint public hearing Wednesday by the California Energy Commission and Public Utilities Commission, energy officials were expected to debate whether Schwarzenegger's greenhouse gas reduction goals will impact companies generating electricity outside California. Nevada, where environmental regulations tend to be more lax, already has several power plants supplying energy to California, and there are plans to...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The Board of Supervisors passed a resolution Tuesday opposing the construction of a coal-fired power plant in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, close to the spot that draws thousands of people every year to the Burning Man festival. The resolution passed unanimously with extensive public comment from environmental advocates. It urges the city of Los Angeles to reject Sempra Energy's application to the Department of Water and Power to tap the regional transmission line it partially owns to carry electricity across the border to California. "This won't be the straw that broke the camel's back, but it's...

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Environmentalists filed a challenge with the NAFTA Commission for Environmental Cooperation on Tuesday against a U.S. liquefied natural gas import terminal planned off Mexico's Pacific coast, within sight of San Diego. Greenpeace Mexico and six other U.S. and Mexican organizations accused Mexico of failing to fully evaluate the possible impact of the plant near Baja California's Coronado Island on an endangered seabird known as Xantus' murrelet. "The Commission for Environmental Cooperation should consider this complaint, because this is a species of bird that migrates and involves all three (NAFTA) countries," Arturo Moreno of Greenpeace Mexico told...

WASHINGTON – As California officials assert their authority in court over liquefied natural gas terminals, Congress is moving to make it clear that federal regulators have the final word on where the sometimes-controversial facilities are located. An energy bill being crafted by a House committee would solidify the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's role in approving the growing number of proposed LNG facilities nationwide, proponents say. Some of the terminals, including several proposed for California, have encountered strong opposition from residents worried about accidents or terrorist attacks involving the highly explosive fuel. Senate energy subcommittee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., introduced similar...

As Sempra Energy broke ground on its $800 million liquefied natural gas receiving terminal in Baja California this week, the state's legislature launched an official inquiry into the project. The investigation, which began yesterday, is led by Guillermo Aldrete Hass, the leader of the legislature's foreign affairs committee. He said he will ask federal officials to suspend the permits for the project while the investigation continues and legal challenges remain unresolved. "There hasn't been transparency from the beginning to the end," Aldrete said. "We want to know the economic and environmental impacts – both negative and positive." Of particular concern,...

ENSENADA, Mexico (Reuters) - For years, Cristina Imana has gazed out from her clifftop porch near the Mexican resort town of Ensenada and watched migrating gray whales roll around with their babies in the glistening surf below. Now, with U.S. oil executives busy laying the foundations for a huge gas import terminal on the shoreline beneath her home, she fears those days are numbered. "It breaks my heart," she said of Sempra Energy's project to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal. ChevronTexaco plans an offshore terminal nearby. In a classic spat between big business and environmentalists, major oil companies...

Sempra Energy yesterday disclosed that federal investigators are probing the company regarding the spike in natural gas prices last year that sent costs soaring more than 45 percent from Thanksgiving to mid-December. The disclosure came on the same day that the Williams Cos. announced that it agreed to forgo $140 million to settle allegations of market-rigging during the state's electricity crisis of 2000-01. San Diego-based Sempra said that it has been subpoenaed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in an investigation of higher natural gas prices. The increases have raised home heating costs and led some major industrial users of...

Sempra's profits up 56%, top estimatesContract with California propels company's growth By Dean Calbreath STAFF WRITEROctober 23, 2002Fueled by a controversial contract with the state of California, profits at Sempra Energy jumped 56 percent during the third quarter, a period when many competing energy companies were losing money. Sempra, the nation's largest natural-gas distributor, generated $150 million in net income during the third quarter, or 73 cents a share, compared with $96 million, or 46 cents, in the same period of 2001. Analysts polled by Thomson First Call had been forecasting profits of 62 cents a share. The profit growth...

<p>Shortly before 9 p.m. on Nov. 11, 2000, opportunity fell into Steve Tish's lap, courtesy of California's energy crisis. Mr. Tish, a trader at PG&E Corp.'s National Energy Group, had been buying small blocks of power at a trading hub in Arizona. Now, another trader wanted the juice at the California-Oregon border, more than 800 miles away, at a price more than double what Mr. Tish had paid for it.</p>

<p>Producer makes progress in talks over contracts signed during last year's crisis.</p> <p>WASHINGTON – Sempra Energy is close to settling its dispute with California over a $6.6 billion power contract signed during the state's energy crisis last year, the judge overseeing the talks said.</p>

State sues to end $6.6 billion contract with Sempra Energy Resources By JENNIFER COLEMAN Associated Press Writer Published 5:40 p.m. PDT Tuesday, July 2, 2002 SACRAMENTO (AP) - The state Department of Water Resources filed a fraud lawsuit against Sempra Energy Resources Tuesday, seeking to end a 10-year, $6.6 billion contract because the energy company hadn't fulfilled its promise to build a power plant by April. The lawsuit alleges that the energy company told the state that it would build its Elk Hill power plant in Bakersfield by April 2002. Instead, the energy company has been...

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...