Cites

Enron Corp.’s relationships with El Paso Electric, Avista Corp. and affiliate Portland General Electric were so cozy that it was impossible at times to distinguish who was calling the shots at the companies’ energy trading desks, according to the FERC staff report on the status of the agency’s probe into energy price manipulation and trading irregularities.

Just weeks after FERC suspended Transwestern Pipeline’s authority to negotiate rates based on pricing differentials due to excessive charges to Sempra Energy Trading and another transportation customer, the Commission has expressed concerns about another negotiated firm transportation contract between the Enron pipeline subsidiary and Sempra Energy.

Calpine Corp., one of two West Coast merchant power plant developers to take it on the chin last Thursday, reported depressed second quarter financial results, mirroring unprecedented low wholesale electricity prices nationally in which the average spark spread between fuel prices and power prices are at historic lows below $5. Both PG&E Corp. (see separate story) and Calpine reported net income that was reduced for the quarter compared to the period a year earlier.

Just weeks after FERC suspended Transwestern Pipeline’s authority to negotiate rates based on pricing differentials due to excessive charges to Sempra Energy Trading and another transportation customer, the Commission has expressed concerns about another negotiated firm transportation contract between the Enron pipeline subsidiary and Sempra Energy.

Contrary to skepticism raised in an ongoing probe by the California legislature, the nation’s largest municipal utility has done nothing wrong in its wholesale power sales over the past two years, and the state asked for a new short-term power deal for this summer, according to Los Angeles Department of Water and Power General Manager David Wiggs, who spoke last Thursday at a media briefing in Washington, DC.

Reliant Resources is doing well in the opening innings of retail electric choice in the ERCOT market and looks to growing retail sales to provide a natural hedge to its wholesale market operations, Chairman Steve Letbetter told stockholders in making a delayed announcement Friday of very positive fourth quarter and full year 2001 earnings for the Resources group and parent Reliant Energy.

BP CEO Sir John Browne said in a speech last week in London that his company no longer would make political contributions anywhere in the world. He said BP’s policy shift reflects a desire to help preserve, or perhaps restore, the “legitimacy” of the political process and of governments around the world, but particularly in the United States, which is where most of BP’s political donations have been directed.

One of two remaining minority Republican appointees and a former two-time president of California’s regulatory commission, Richard Bilas announced Wednesday he is resigning from the California Public Utilities Commission effective March 8. In a letter to Gov. Gray Davis, Bilas, a Ph.D. free-market economist and former university professor, curtly referred to being “most frustrated by the policy changes at the Commission.”

BP’s CEO Sir John Browne said in a speech Wednesday in London that his company no longer would make political contributions anywhere in the world. He said BP’s policy shift reflects a desire to help preserve, or perhaps restore, the “legitimacy” of the political process and of governments around the world, but particularly in the United States, which is where most of BP’s political donations have been directed.