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Pastimes : The California Energy Crisis - Information & Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Quincy who wrote (1074)	1/29/2002 11:43:11 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1715

Senate Energy Committee Hearings Yields Bombshells Hi Quincy, You might want to check out the rebroadcast or webcast of today's Energy Committee Hearings: cspan.org [[See link in upper right hand corner.]] Robert McCullough, the author of that infamous .pdf you commented on just upstream in the thread dropped another bombshell. Enron went bankrupt on Dec. 2. On Dec. 3, the 2003 and 2004 forwards contracts for electricity on the West Coast dropped 30%! In one day. Say hey! What does that say about market power? McCullough concluded that Enron controlled about 30-50% of the national wholesale electrical forwards market before its demise. Enough to give it market power. Sen. Dianne Feinstein reported that Enron controlled 50-70% of the natural gas market at the Southern California/Arizona border during the infamous price spike to $59/MCF in Dec. 2000. The price at the hub in New Mexico at the time was $10. The transport cost from New Mexico to the California state line was $1.00. There is no accounting for the $48.00 spread. She largely placed the blame with Enron, though allowed that El Paso and Sempra were also implicated. I believe she may be shading things a bit. My earlier reading leads me to believe El Paso was a bigger culprit by excluding shippers from its pipeline. Great TV. Very compelling stuff. Not the usual pabulum by a long shot. -Ray