Head

The head of the General Accounting Office (GAO) says he will pursue a lawsuit against the Bush White House this week if Vice President Dick Cheney does not comply with his demands for the information and records of the Cabinet-level task force, which drafted the administration’s energy policy.

All signals late Friday indicated that former Enron Chairman and CEO Kenneth L. Lay will testify when he comes before a subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee this week, said a spokesman for the full committee.

Despite findings by the Enron board of directors’ special investigative committee that top company officials used the controversial off-the-book partnerships for self-enrichment gains, the director who headed up the three-month investigation of the collapsed energy trader refused to say Tuesday that the activities of Enron executives rose to the level of criminal securities fraud.

Energy legislation will come to a head in the Senate this week, as Republicans are expected to try to attach the House comprehensive energy bill (H.R. 4) to the economic-stimulus package that is scheduled for debate on the floor, according to Capitol Hill observers.

An “outraged” El Paso Natural Gas and El Paso Merchant Energy Co. called on FERC last week to short-circuit an attempt by its Office of General Counsel’s Market Oversight and Enforcement Section (MOE) to expand an investigation into whether the two affiliates conspired last winter to artificially drive up prices for natural gas delivered to the Southern California border.

The head of the California Public Utilities Commission, Loretta Lynch, last week blasted the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. proposed bankruptcy reorganization plan as a “regulatory jailbreak” in which the utility is attempting to complete a failed deregulation plan that was blocked earlier by regulators and legislators. She encouraged the bankruptcy court judge to reject the proposal.

The head of California’s small power producers’ trade group and state political officials clashed in separate news media conference calls Wednesday over whether past and present political considerations are hampering moves to bring stability to the state’s continuously unsettled energy markets.

As pipeline planners head north into regions where the population is primarily – and sometimes exclusively – aboriginal, Canada’s National Energy Board is laying out a formula for turning touchy relations into business relationships: Make deals, not regulations.

As pipeline planners head north into regions where the population is primarily — and sometimes exclusively — aboriginal, Canada’s National Energy Board is laying out a formula for turning touchy relations into business relationships: Make deals, not regulations.