Bureau

The staff of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Bureau ofEconomics and of Policy Planning said it generally supports theshort-term and long-term remedies that FERC has identified for theCalifornia power market but believes FERC should provide moreconcrete advice on how best to configure the organization that willoperate and control the transmission grid in the state. In commentsfiled with FERC this week, the FTC said FERC should considercreating a benchmark or a baseline of characteristics andoperations for regional transmission organizations that can be usedas a starting point as part of its revisions to California’swholesale electric power market rules and institutions. Inaddition, the comments suggest refinements to FERC’s proposedremedies to ensure that market power is not exercised in wholesaleelectric power markets, to the detriment of consumers. FERC OrderProposing Remedies for California Wholesale Electric Markets wasreleased Nov. 1 (see Daily GPI, Nov. 2). The order was intended toremedy deficiencies in market rules and institutions that havecontributed to recent reliability difficulties and high prices forelectric power in California.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is taking no chances in thewake of the Carlsbad, NM, natural gas pipeline explosion. It hasordered a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on a proposalto refurbish and put back into service the Equilon Pipeline, a406-mile, 42-year old crude oil pipeline from Odessa, TX toBloomfield, NM.