Accounting

The General Accounting Office (GAO) said Friday it was dropping its year-long legal effort to force the Bush White House to turn over the names of energy executives and companies that may have influenced the drafting of the administration’s national energy policy.

The General Accounting Office (GAO) said Friday it was dropping its year-long legal effort to force the Bush White House to turn over the names of energy executives and companies that may have influenced the drafting of the administration’s national energy policy.

Citing FERC’s glaring delinquency in this area, the General Accounting Office (GAO) last week called on the Commission to take regulatory action to bring its civil penalties that are covered under the Inflation Adjustment Act (IAA) more in line with inflation.

At the urging of U.S. Rep. William J. Pascrell Jr. (D-NJ) and 22 other House lawmakers, the General Accounting Office (GAO) has agreed to carry out another review of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to assess how the agency’s deregulation activities and its failure to properly oversee energy companies have directly affected consumers.

Sens. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and Jean Carnahan (D-MO) have called on the General Accounting Office (GAO) to keep a close eye on FERC’s performance in monitoring the energy industry over the next year.

A long-awaited General Accounting Office (GAO) report last week concluded that FERC has not effectively policed the energy industry over the past years, but it said the Commission was not totally to blame. The agency needs greater authority to issue civil penalties, more employees who have a working knowledge of how competitive energy markets operate, a bigger budget and a more aggressive monitoring presence in the natural gas and electricity markets, if it is to become effective in the future, according to the GAO.

The current decline in market liquidity is an unfortunate but inevitable consequence of the energy trading and accounting scandals that have arisen since the fall of the house of Enron. Sources in all market areas report seeing a gradual shrinking of liquidity as their risk management officials put various counterparties off-limits due to questions about their creditworthiness or reputation.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) asked a federal court last week to put a halt to the General Accounting Office’s (GAO) legal pursuits to gain access to the Bush administration documents and records of the activities of the high-profile task force that formulated the president’s national energy policy last year.

The General Accounting Office (GAO) showed Friday that its threats, even those against the White House, are not idle when it filed a long-awaited lawsuit in federal court to obtain administration records associated with the task force that formulated the president’s national energy policy.