San Diego-based Sempra Energy and its two utilities, Southern California Gas Co. and San Diego Gas and Electric Co., were accused of driving up wholesale natural gas prices, along with several other natural gas companies, in a lawsuit filed in a California Superior Court in San Diego Thursday. Separate suits were filed by the city/county of San Francisco and the county of Santa Clara.

A corporate Sempra spokesperson in San Diego Friday labeled the legal action as “meritless,” although he said the company had not been formally served with copies of the lawsuits.

The lawsuits allege that the Sempra companies, along with producers, marketers, traders and others drove up California’s natural gas prices during the 2000-2001 energy crisis. Other suits, including some class actions, have been filed in recent months and years, making some of the same allegations.

Sempra’s spokesperson said that from news reports of the lawsuits it appears the actions are “long on hyperbole, short on substance and teeming with false allegations.” He said Sempra and all of its companies have “followed the rules (of the wholesale energy markets) and none of their activities have in any way adversely impacted consumers.”

One of the allegations in the lawsuits is that Sempra and others reported false sales to energy trade publications that publish price indexes that in turn are used widely in the industry to set prices.

“It is clear that the illegal actions of the gas sellers and traders artificially increased the price of gas for millions of California consumers as well as for public entities like San Francisco, ” according to San Francisco’s City Attorney Dennis Herrera, as quoted in business wire reports in California Friday.

Along with the Sempra companies, the others named in the lawsuits are: Reliant Energy, CenterPoint Energy, Coral Energy, WD Energy Services Inc., EnCana Corp.’s U.S.-based trading unit, CMS Energy, Aquila Inc., and Cantera Gas Co.

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