Flak

While the outlook was rosier than it has been in more than three years, some of the 200-300 PG&E Corp. shareholders attending the corporate annual meeting Wednesday in San Francisco tossed some verbal grenades at CEO Robert Glynn for the company’s $83 million bonus program last year for 17 of the top executives, including Glynn himself, who pocketed the single biggest bonus at $17 million.

More than $500 million is at stake in a growing dispute between Sempra Energy’s San Diego Gas and Electric Co. utility and various political, regulatory and consumer leaders, resurfacing recently with the release of sworn testimony by an SDG&E executive.

Out-of-state power generators that have taken much of the flak for all that’s gone wrong in California’s electricity markets last Thursday blasted a recent lawsuit by California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and Assemblywoman Barbara Matthews that accused the companies of engaging in illegal price fixing activities. As they prepare to wage war on yet another legal front, those same generators are mulling whether now is the right time to sit down with California Gov. Gray Davis to discuss the state’s energy crisis.

Regardless of what state and federal officials would prefer,California’s now-Chapter 11-bound former wholesale spot powermarket, the California Power Exchange (Cal-PX) is not goingquietly. The PX perfers to fight to re-attain former utilityfutures contracts seized by the governor and to support theviability of electricity commodity exchanges if regulators andpoliticians will make a commitment to make them work.