District

Southern Union Co. announced Monday that U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn O. Silver, in Phoenix has issued a Jan. 4, 2002 Order dismissing all of Southwest Gas’ and ONEOK’s claims against Southern Union, in the three-year battle over the merger that never happened.

Calpine Corp. has confirmed that the Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California has approved an order which authorizes Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) to pay all of its outstanding payables owed to Calpine’s qualifying facility (QF) affiliates for power deliveries the San Jose, CA-based company made to PG&E between Dec. 1, 2000 through April 6, 2001. PG&E owes Calpine approximately $265 million, plus interest.

A new class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court claims Enron Corp. recklessly endangered its employees’ retirement funds, causing some of them to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars almost overnight. The suit was filed by Steve Berman of the Seattle-based law firm Hagens Berman on behalf of a proposed class of participants in the Enron Stock Plan.

AES Corp. disclosed in a regulatory filing made with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the Department of Justice (DOJ) last month commenced an antitrust investigation related to an agreement between AES Southland LLC and Williams Energy Services Co. The DOJ alleges that the agreement limits the expansion of electric generating capacity at or near certain plants owned by AES Southland. In connection with the investigation, the DOJ sent a civil investigative demand to AES Southland requesting the answer to certain interrogatories and the production of documents. AES Southland is cooperating with the terms of the civil investigative demand, AES noted. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in March of this year ordered Williams Energy Marketing & Trading and AES Southland to justify why they should not be found to have violated the Federal Power Act (FPA) by engaging in actions to drive up power prices in the California bulk market and potentially compromising the reliability of the transmission network (see Daily GPI, March 15). In California, Williams markets power produced from two generating units owned by AES. FERC said its investigation showed that Williams and AES appeared to have financial incentive to prolong outages from the two generating units to drive up prices.

In the nothing-is-really-settled department, the State ofCalifornia was preparing to intervene today in a federal districtcourt in Los Angeles that has been asked to raise utility rates tocover the unpaid costs of wholesale power.

Exploring yet another legal avenue, Pacific Gas and Electric Co.Wednesday filed in San Francisco’s federal district court askingfor a judicial ruling that will mandate that it can recover all ofthe nearly $3 billion in uncollected wholesale electricity coststhat have been mounting since May when price spikes in Califonia’smarket left the state’s major investor-owned utilities vulnerablebecause their retail power rates are frozen at 1996 levels.

A federal district court has struck down a controversial part ofthe Interior Department’s 1997 royalty valuation rule under whichroyalties were calculated on the market price of the gas even if itwas a delivered price downstream from the lease, the IndependentPetroleum Association of America said yesterday.

Kinder Morgan Inc. said it has filed a “motion to dismiss” inColorado Federal District Court and will defend itself against acomplaint filed Dec. 20 by the Justice Department on behalf of theEnvironmental Protection Agency. The complaint alleges KMIsubsidiary Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America (NGPL) failed toobtain all necessary air quality permits when constructing theAkron Compressor Station in Weld County, CO, more than 20 yearsago. It requests penalties up to the statutory maximums of $25,000per day of violation prior to January 30, 1997 and $27,500 for eachday of violation after January 31, 1997.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia last weekreversed and remanded a FERC order rejecting Transcontinental GasPipe Line Corp’s bid to levy two-part, “firm-to-the-wellhead” (FTW)rates on certain production-area customers served by the line.