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Avista Cleared of Any Trading Misconduct
After several years of added time and legal costs, Avista Corp. received a formal decision Wednesday from FERC that the company’s utility and trading units had not manipulated wholesale energy markets during the western crisis of 2000-2001. The regulators approved their trial staff’s conclusion of no wrongdoing.
Avista CEO Gary Ely said the company is “pleased to have the matter concluded” after Avista Utilities and Avista Energy were exonerated related to allegations and charges that have been leveled against many of the major wholesale energy players in the West. The company noted through a spokesperson that it has never calculated the cost of responding to the FERC investigation and most likely the amount will stay buried in the company’s operating/maintenance expenses and recovered in utility rates.
“We don’t have the final FERC legal costs, and I am not sure those have been calculated separately, but clearly they have never been disclosed in any of our SEC filings,” said an Avista spokesperson. “I don’t think they will ever be called out as a line item; I think they will just be included as a cost of doing business going forward as are a lot of legal fees for other cases.”
FERC Chief Administrative Law Judge Curtis L. Wagner Jr. had certified the agreement last July, finding that “no unresolved issues of material fact” were outstanding, and “the record [was] sufficient for the [FERC] to make a determination on the merits of the settlement” between the companies and the FERC trial staff. FERC’s commissioners concurred on Wednesday.
Trial staff had noted that Avista cooperated fully with the FERC investigation and did not attempt to withhold any relevant information. Staff said that there was no evidence that anyone at Avista knowingly “engaged in or facilitated” improper trading or manipulation of the wholesale energy markets.
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