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Gold/Mining/Energy : Strictly: Drilling and oil-field services -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: excardog who wrote (81883)	12/17/2000 3:44:15 AM
From: Douglas V. Fant	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 95453

excardog, Heh-heh, Political posterior covering has commenced. Gov. Kitzhaber makes public a view held privately by anyone active within any of the three pending western RTO's- Cal ISO, RTOWest and Desert-STAR. And that is California is a 1200 pound gorilla whose thrashing about the cage threatens to impact us "lesser western gorillas" like Oregon, Washington, etc. The bottom line is this: California for decades has had a "NIMBY" poicy that externalizes any what they perceive to be "dirty industry" upon adjacent western states. Certainly power plants, powerlines, and substations fit within that category, with for e.g. the 80's building of the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Generating Station in Arizona yet being one example of this policy; look also at restricting offshore oil & gas drilling, restricting refineries, restricting pipelines, etc, on and on. This policy worked so long as adjacent states were politically weak and thinly populated. Well of course that has changed as Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah have developed much higher growth rates than California. For e.g Las Vegas will grow 30% by 2005; Phoenix 21% by 2005...(That's from 3.2 mm people to 3.9mm people- in just four more years!). And of course these western cities outside of California are no longer just "wide spots in the road". This has caused two things to occur. Local growth has begun to absorb the excess basic industry capacity located in these same states that would have otherwise been sold/exported to California. Second local political power has grown which allows non- California western states to protect local interests more effectively.... And power is not the only place that you see these hightened conflicts. Look at water. Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt just released last week (suprisingly noone noticed!) the final Bureau of Reclamation Interim Surplus Criteria to implement what is known as the "California 4.4 Plan", to try and get the State of California to cut back on its current 5.9 mm acre feet annual water usage of the Colorado River back to its authorized 4.4 million acre feet (per US Supreme Court Opinion Arizona v. California from about 15 years ago). Well DOI gave California a sweetheart deal and allowed them 15 years to fall back to 4.4mm acre feet- However it is nonetheless a victory for Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming, the upstream and adjacent states as it protects their US Supreme Court-designated rights to this precious water resource.... Same issue in power. The problem is that California represents 10% of the US economy, so it needs to be protected. However they also need to develop some rational land use planning approaches. The rest of the West cannot keep subsidizing California's bad decision making in this area.... I had to laugh on additional BPA power. You know that are dozens of smaller hydro units on streams in Northern California. Were they cranking additional power last week too- or still remaining restricted in production due to local California environmental restrictions while Oregon had to give up their power resources in order to help California? (By the way- These same topics are also under discussion within the Arizona State Government as we speak). It's OK to help our 54 electoral vote neighbor- But our neighbor also has to show some genuine effort to reform its own planning/land use system to resolve these problems too....And frankly I do not see that happening....