Puts

FERC on Friday put 13 California power sellers on notice thatthey must either make refunds to the tune of about $69 million orprovide further justification of the prices they charged forelectricity sold in the California Independent System Operator(ISO) and Power Exchange (PX) markets during the month of January.

In a week that saw it sign a 10-year supply deal with the stateof California, double its gas reserves with a billion-dollarCanadian acquisition and dip into the financial markets for morethan a billion, it seemed only fitting that San Jose, CA-basedCalpine Corp. should announce bullish earning results for 2000.

El Paso Natural Gas has decided to postpone what it called”routine” maintenance projects on its system in order to maintainthe flow of natural gas into the California market to meet thesurge in demand there. The higher demand has been created by ashortfall in energy imports from the Northwest region, which hasbeen gripped by cold weather.

In the midst of the continuing uncertainty over regulatorytreatment of growing wholesale electricity cost under-collections,Fitch Tuesday assigned a “rating watch negative” designation to thesecurities of California’s two largest investor-owned utilities,Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison (and itsparent company, Edison International). In addition, it loweredEdison’s commercial paper rating one notch to “F1” from “F1+”.

Responding to one of the early lessons from electricityderegulation efforts in California and other states, Bellevue,WA-based Puget Sound Energy announced last week (Sept. 27) it istaking steps to eventually give all of its customers the tools toshift their energy use away from the highest-priced, peak-demandperiods. Elected and regulatory officials in other states likeCalifornia have already said that this so-called”demand-responsiveness” for customers is the one essentialingredient that is missing in their drives to create competitiveretail electric markets.

The Democrats barely mentioned the word “energy” in theirplatform at the August convention, but President Clinton put thespotlight on energy issues last week in Washington with hisdecision to release 30 million barrels of crude oil from theStrategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), as well as a record $400 millionof funding for energy assistance to low-income households for thiswinter.

California Gov. Gray Davis is focused on anything but energythis week as he sorts through 1,400 pieces of new state legislationawaiting his signature by a Sept. 30 deadline, but he is expectedto re-focus on the simmering electricity issues next month,according to aides in Sacramento, CA.

Prices continued to build Monday on the strong foundationdeveloped in the latter half of last week. Only the NorthernCalifornia points of Malin and the PG&E citygate failed to gaina dime or more.

Although energy e-commerce is a burgeoning industry, there areonly a few electronic exchanges so far that can be used for servingaggregated retail energy customer loads, and even those that are upand running still may need to be customized, according to AvistaAdvantage, an Avista Corp. subsidiary.