Offshoot

A climate change activist group in the Pacific Northwest Monday demonstrated against Northwest Natural Gas Co. for its support of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility and related pipeline as an offshoot of wider demonstrations in Portland, OR.

An offshoot of the original developer of the 310 MW of solar installations currently operating in the Mojave Desert in Southern California is the latest entrant in an increasingly competitive push to develop utility-scale solar power generation installations in the desert north and east of the Los Angeles Basin. All three major utilities have contracts for a proposed project, any one of which would dwarf any other solar installation now in existence in the United States.

In an offshoot of the court-approved class action litigation settlement over Sempra Energy’s utilities’ alleged driving up of wholesale natural gas prices in the midst of the 2000-2001 energy crisis, the utilities and neighboring Southern California Edison Co. have reached a settlement that calls for changes in the way the Sempra gas storage program is operated. The three utilities jointly filed a motion with the California Public Utilities Commission last Monday to stay a regulatory case examining storage operations.

With funding from an offshoot of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s historic Chapter 11 bankruptcy settlement, the nation’s first university-based technology center devoted to energy efficiency was dedicated by state, energy and environmental officials Wednseday at the University of California, Davis, a few miles west of the state Capitol.

In its latest 10-K report to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Sioux Falls, SD-based NorthWestern Corp. confirmed that it is cooperating with separate investigations by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The investigations resulted from an ongoing class action lawsuit that dates back to the sale of Montana Power Co. to NorthWestern in early 2002.

In its latest 10-K report to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Sioux Falls, SD-based NorthWestern Corp. confirmed that it is cooperating with separate investigations by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The investigations resulted from an ongoing class action lawsuit that dates back to the sale of Montana Power Co. to NorthWestern in early 2002.

California is learning the hard way that yet another earlyoffshoot of more competitive energy markets is the arcane world oftrying to police the activities between state-regulated utilitiesand their unregulated affiliates. Nearing the end of its first yearof dealing with this issue, California is experiencing, at best, anuneasy peace between state regulators and the state’s three majorinvestor-owned utility holding companies.

California is learning the hard way that yet another earlyoffshoot of more competitive energy markets is the arcane world oftrying to police the activities between state-regulated utilitiesand their unregulated affiliates operating in the gas and electricmarkets. Nearing the end of its first year of dealing with thisissue, California is experiencing, at best, an uneasy peace betweenstate regulators and the state’s three major investor-owned utilityholding companies.