El Paso Corp., California regulators and other parties have asked FERC to defer the agency’s decision of the claims that the energy company manipulated natural gas prices in the western state by 45 days to give them time to submit a formal settlement offer and seek dismissal of the charges.

In a formal motion filed at the agency Friday, El Paso, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison and the city of Los Angeles said the requested delay would provide them with “additional time to reduce their agreement in principle to a formal settlement agreement” and file it with FERC.

The parties sought the stay on the same day that Houston-based El Paso announced it had reached a “comprehensive settlement agreement in principle” that resolves all regulatory and legal actions related to the sale or delivery of gas and electricity to California and three other western states from September 1996 to the present. The total cost of the settlement, which included both cash and non-cash concessions, was estimated at $1.7 billion (See Daily GPI, March 24). El Paso does not admit any wrongdoing in the agreement.

Specifically, El Paso and California parties asked FERC to refrain from ruling on two initial decisions of the agency’s Chief Judge Curtis Wagner Jr. — one that found El Paso Natural Gas had withheld substantial amounts of capacity from California to ratchet up gas prices in the state during 2000 and 2001, and an earlier one that concluded the El Paso pipeline had violated Commission regulations prohibiting pipes from giving preferential treatment to their marketing affiliates [RP00-241].

FERC, which is considering the request, still is scheduled to act on Wagner’s decisions in the high-profile El Paso complaint case at the agency’s regular meeting on Wednesday. A notice to strike the case from the agenda may not be issued until just before the start of the meeting, a FERC spokeswoman said.

El Paso and California parties reminded the Commission that it “has strongly encouraged settlements to resolve disputes related to the pending litigation over energy prices in the western U.S. in 2000-01.” Their request is limited to the El Paso complaint and “is not intended to apply” to any other case scheduled for action on Wednesday, they said.

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