Political

Even in the current political maelstrom surrounding some of its past trading practices during California’s energy crisis of 2000-2001, the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the nation’s largest municipal utility, is financially and operationally secure in mid-2002, looking to expand its natural gas buying and power generation portfolios, according to its General Manager David Wiggs.

While the financial and political sectors are consumed with what last week’s revelations about wholesale power market manipulation will mean to the energy industry, California’s independent electric transmission grid operator, Cal-ISO, is focused on the broader market power abuses as the potential malfunctions that have the broadest, longest lasting and most costly impact. Relatively, the market power costs are in the billions of dollars, while the market manipulation of the kind described in the infamous Enron internal memos (see Daily GPI, May 9) collectively costs maybe hundreds of millions, according to Cal-ISO sources.

FERC delivered a powerful one-two punch in energy, financial and political circles last week. First, it released explosive documents that appeared to all but substantiate charges that the once-mighty Enron Corp. manipulated trading in the California power market. And before the shock waves had subsided, it launched an industry-wide dragnet targeting 150 electric suppliers to find out just how widespread the use of questionable trading practices has been in the western wholesale energy markets. The gas industry could be the next target, some believe.

All the economic and political stars would have to be in alignment for even the relatively modest Canadian version of arctic natural gas development to make it into construction, says the senior partner.

Although tainted by the infamous “E”-word now permeating American news and political-speak, Northwest Natural Gas Corp. is pressing ahead on its plan to buy Enron Corp.’s utility subsidiary Portland General Electric Co. (PGE) for $1.8 billion. The two Portland, OR-based companies plan to form a new combination utility powerhouse by the fourth quarter this year.

County Executive Andrew Spano of Westchester County, NY, vowed Thursday to use every “administrative, political and legal weapon” at his disposal to block construction of the embattled Millennium Pipeline project through the city of Mount Vernon.

Billing them as “two new whistleblowers,” California political officials responded last week to heavy counterattacks in the news media by Duke Energy North America, which strongly argues it has done nothing wrong. The state politicians brought forth two additional former power plant workers who allege wrongdoing by Duke in the operation of a San Diego County generation plant.

As a clear signal that the state legislature still wants to weigh in with a broad-based settlement to California’s electricity crisis, state regulators Tuesday canceled a special meeting to vote on suspending direct access retail competition at the urging of state officials, including the Department of Water Resources (DWR), which is buying all of the power for financially crippled private sector utilities. The California Public Utilities Commission will reconsider the issue in mid-August, the drop-dead deadline for a legislative solution that will prevent a second major utility from falling into bankruptcy.

As another week passed without a settlement among state political, regulatory and energy stakeholders, California state officials continued to push on with investigations and proposed punitive legislative measures aimed at merchant generators and marketers that are accused of price-gouging in the state’s wholesale power and natural gas markets.