Asking

The firm representing Enron Corp.’s acting CEO on Thursday filed a motion with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan asking for a $25 million “success fee” for guiding the fallen energy giant through its Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Texas Public Utilities Commission (PUC) is asking state lawmakers to allow it to beef up the financial penalties it can impose for violations of state law or its own rules as they relates to errant behavior in the state’s power markets. The current $5,000 penalty may not be enough of a deterrent to prevent power companies from trying to exercise market power or game those markets, the PUC said.

Texas consumer groups filed a petition with the state’s Public Utility Commission (PUC) Thursday asking for an investigation of NewPower’s financial status. Because of its sagging financial health, NewPower announced it would no longer sign up new customers from Texas and other parts of the country, but instead concentrate on its current ones. NewPower is the state’s leading retail provider of customers that switched from incumbent utilities after Texas deregulated January 1. It currently has more than 70,000 of the 200,000 Texas customers who have switched.

On top of asking the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to turn over financial records on the once high-flying Enron Corp., two House panels have fired off letters to Chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay and former CFO Andrew S. Fastow seeking mounds of financial information related to the off-balance sheet entities that sparked the free-fall in the energy trader’s stock, and further interviews with key players who may possess critical information about the corporation’s financial collapse.

FERC Commissioner Pat Wood III said last week that while he doesn’t advocate asking Congress to restore the agency’s authority to regulate gathering, he is concerned about problems that offshore producers may be facing in a de-regulated market.

The FERC-certificated Guardian Pipeline is engulfed in another war with detractors of its project. This time it is asking the Commission to block an attempt by a coalition of landowners to hold up construction of its proposed pipeline that would cater to Upper Midwest natural gas markets.

The FERC-certificated Guardian Pipeline is engulfed in another war with detractors of its project. This time it is asking the Commission to block an attempt by a coalition of landowners to hold up construction of its proposed pipeline that would cater to Upper Midwest natural gas markets.

The New England Power Pool (NEPOOL) is asking FERC to allow it to change the treatment of installed capability (ICAP) transactions in order to make it easier to trade ICAP and firm energy products across control area boundaries. NEPOOL said that its proposed market rule revisions represent a significant step in facilitating inter-control area trading of ICAP, while also focusing on New England’s largest export market, New York.

The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) is asking FERC to approve a market design in New York electricity markets based on an unforced capacity (UCAP) methodology, which it says will offer an incentive for generators to improve the efficiency of their generating assets. More broadly, the ISO expects the UCAP proposal to bring it one step closer to the development of a common installed capability (ICAP) market design among the various Northeastern ISOs.