Calls

A hotly contested route alternative that calls for theCanada-to-New York Millennium Pipeline to be built within anelectric transmission system’s right-of-way (ROW) in WestchesterCounty, NY, is a “viable option” provided state regulators and thepipeline can work out the construction details, according to asupplemental draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) issued byFERC staff last week.

A hotly contested route alternative that calls for theCanada-to-New York Millennium Pipeline to be built within anelectric transmission system’s right-of-way (ROW) in WestchesterCounty, NY, is a “viable option” provided state regulators and thepipeline can work out the construction details, according to asupplemental draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) issued byFERC staff last week.

Finding no evidence of illegal activity on the part of localdistribution gas companies, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixonstill wants the state’s system of natural gas regulation overhauledbecause it does not provide consumers with appropriate protectionsfrom “dramatic price increases.”

California’s governor late Friday confirmed that the latestplans call for the state to demand the equivalent of stock optionsin its two largest investor-owned utilities, Pacific Gas andElectric and Southern California Edison, in return for the state’sproposed plan to spend billions of dollars in the next few monthsto help the two utilities avoid bankruptcy and to bring order toCalifornia’s increasingly chaotic energy markets, some of which hasbeen caused directly by the negative cash flow plaguing bothcompanies.

With the New Year’s first power alert called an hour earlier,California Gov. Gray Davis late Monday afternoon outlined his stateenergy crisis plan, calling for state-backed pushes to accelerateconservation and new generation, along with a threat he would usethe power of eminent domain to takeover private sector plants ifprices do not ease. He said the power generators had only oneobjective: “maximizing unheard of profits.”

Although several shippers empathized with the plight of thenorthern Nevada industrial gas users, they said they couldn’tsupport their request to be excused from the continual must-flowoperational flow orders (OFOs) that Northwest Pipeline has beenissuing since mid-November.

The main targets of California’s legal and political ire —Texas-based energy giants — are denying any wrongdoing in theface of lawsuits and a state legal probe launched last week in themidst of continuing price spirals and tight supplies for naturalgas and electricity throughout the greater western region.

Mirroring similar action he took last summer in the face ofskyrocketing wholesale power prices, California Gov. Gray Davis onFriday asked his state attorney general to investigate the recentsevere spike in wholesale natural gas prices at the Californiaborder, where prices are among the highest in the nation. In aseparate action, two class action lawsuits were filed Monday inCalifornia Superior Court, alleging that gas and electricity pricespikes are the result of a four-year-old “conspiracy” by SouthernCalifornia Gas, San Diego Gas and Electric and El Paso Natural Gas.(see separate story)

“The new market structure is broken and must be discarded,” saidEdison International Chairman John E. Bryson yesterday, in astatement warning that his company soon will be “compelled to takedrastic measures,” including “rationing” electricity. He called fora return to regulation, where needed.