Justice

Royal Dutch/Shell Group confirmed last week that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched a criminal probe into its oil and gas reserves accounting.

Royal Dutch/Shell Group confirmed that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched a criminal probe into its oil and gas reserves accounting. The company said last week it was unaware of a DOJ investigation (see Daily GPI, March 18).

Several western energy suppliers — Reliant Energy Services Inc., El Paso Merchant Energy LP and Portland General Electric — are urging FERC to limit the scope of the agency’s planned public release of confidential information relating to the ongoing California market manipulation cases at the agency.

Justice Department attorneys were dealt another blow on Friday when a federal judge ordered the Bush administration to turn over to two Washington, DC-based public interest groups more documents and records related to Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force, which developed the national energy policy last year.

A federal court judge Thursday denied the Department of Justice’s request to dismiss a lawsuit seeking documents from Vice President Dick Cheney and his energy task force related to the development of the national energy policy last year.

On top of the ongoing investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and departments of Justice and Labor, two senators now have called on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to launch a probe into Enron Corp. and its officers and directors to determine whether any federal fraud and consumer protection law violations and other irregularities occurred leading up to the collapse of the former energy giant.

The antitrust division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) is probing allegations raised in a PJM Interconnection report that concludes that earlier this year a market participant exercised undue market power in PJM’s capacity credit markets, causing the price in those markets to spike higher than it would have otherwise been in a competitive market.

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.

The name “ICE” doesn’t seem to do the white-hot trading exchangejustice, after IntercontinentalExchange, which marketsover-the-counter energy and metals products, announced it tradedmore than 2 million MWh in one day — Thursday — just one monthafter going live with its complete energy portfolio.