Poster

Youngstown, OH, long a Rust Belt poster child, now is watching the phoenix-like revival of its flagship steel plant, Youngstown Iron Sheet & Tube, thanks to the Utica and Marcellus shales. The 100-year old plant, once one of largest in the world before it foundered in the 1970s collapse of the nation’s steel industry, will be making steel pipe to serve the state’s burgeoning shale gas and oil development.

Calpine Corp. and the independent power industry hope to catch their collective breath over the holiday week after the power plant poster child charts a new future in its $27 billion Chapter 11 bankruptcy in federal court in lower Manhattan, not far from Wall Street where it once basked in a Google-like aura in the late 1990s.

California, as the nation’s early poster child for energyindustry restructuring, has to bite the bullet and decide if itwants robust retail competition for natural gas and electricity, orwhether it wants to stop where it is now with wholesalecompetition, “declare victory and everyone go home,” said thestate’s top energy regulator, Richard Bilas, an economist andpresident of the California Public Utilities Commission. If itwants retail competition, then the state should consider adoptingsome of the aspects of Georgia’s gas restructuring andPennsylvania’s electricity changes.