While the clocks tick and the calendar pages keep turning,California keeps churning out court and regulatory cases fasterthan legislative solutions for its nagging energy woes.

A federal judge yesterday extended his order to four suppliersto keep providing the state with electricity through Friday. Thedecision may conflict with a FERC order issued last week, accordingto sources at the Commission.

In court on Tuesday, a federal district judge in Los Angeles,Carlos Moreno, denied an injunction request by Enron and AvistaEnergy against the moribund Cal-PX to block thesoon-to-be-out-of-business state-chartered spot power market fromallegedly using two energy firms’ letters of credit to pay foroutstanding power bills of Southern California Edison Co. andPacific Gas and Electric Co. The judge said he would leave to FERCthe matter of how to direct Cal-PX. FERC has set a deadline of Feb.28 for comments on complaints filed by companies seeking suspensionof the Cal-PX’s “charge back” mechanism. The PX argues its tariffallows it charge market participants for uncollected receivablesregardless of who actually owes the money.

Meanwhile, negotiations were continuing in the legislatureyesterday on plans for a state power authority, which would beresponsible for building new generation, potentially assumingcontrol of existing generation and taking over the operations ofthe Power Exchange (Cal-PX). The plan has received a cold receptionfrom merchant generators, who believe it may remove any incentiveto move forward on their own generation plans. A spokesman for DukeEnergy expressed skepticism about the proposal because Duke is inthe process of tripling its investment to more than $600 million inthe Morro Bay generation project.

“This is a project we began two years ago and for which we haveincreased the investment from $225 million to $600 million, butwith the state power authority bill we need more adequateincentives to move this project forward,” said Tom Williams.

“The power authority bill makes it look like the state wants totake it all over, which is part of the state’s problem.”

Duke also issued a statement from its corporate headquarters inCharlotte, NC, saying it won’t sign any long-term power contractswith the state until it has assurances it will get paid for passedsupplies. Reliant Energy’s CEO in Houston said his firm is owed$370 million.

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