Wars

Skip Horvath, president of the Natural Gas Supply Association (NGSA), on Wednesday said that producers are “less optimistic” than they were a year ago “because we’re losing the access restriction battle,” which he cited as one of the reasons why natural gas supplies remain so tight in the U.S.

Coming down firmly on the side of generators in California’s ongoing energy wars, FERC last Wednesday ordered the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO) to enforce the creditworthiness requirement of its open access tariff and previous orders issued by the Commission within 15 days. The Commission said that it was taking this step in order to ensure timely payment of Cal-ISO’s energy suppliers.

Controversy, fueled by increasing political tensions, heated up last week about a group of private sector consultants brought on the state payroll by Gov. Gray Davis in the past six months to help California wrestle with its electricity problems, including the state’s role in buying bulk wholesale power.

As a footnote to the wide-ranging issues emerging fromCalifornia’s electricity wars this summer, the City of Los AngelesDepartment of Water and Power (LADWP) Tuesday paid a record $14million penalty to regional air quality regulators as a result ofrunning its older, more polluting LA Basin generating plantsfull-out this summer. The heavy penalty points up an increasinglytenuous situation for merchant generators who are running out ofways to avoid exceeding their plants’ air emission limits.