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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rich4eagle who wrote (248130)	4/16/2002 2:06:39 AM
From: DavesM	Respond to of 769667

Rich, My belief is that President Clinton, knew there was a serious power crunch in CA during the summer and fall of 2000. At the time, there was a very serious drought in the Pacific Northwest (during the summer, California used to import as much as 15% of its peak power from out of state), this resulted in a dramatic reduction in power sent to California. I don't think President Clinton would let the Administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration seriously reduce power imports to California, if there wasn't a real reason. Because of the high temperatures in CA (and I believe, the Southwest in general), it was also (claimed) difficult to import power from out of state power plants from the Southwest. The lack of power from the out of State, forced power plants in state to work much harder than they normally would - according to air pollution regulators in Southern California 3X normal (3 times the air pollution). Because of the air quality in California, there are legal limits on how much air pollution companies can emit. In order to run 300% of normal, natural gas electric power plants had to purchase pollution "credits". By late 2000, early 2001, the credits alone added as much as $250 to the cost of each MW produced (from old inefficient power plants). The gas these plants were eating (and market manipulation) caused the Natural Gas to spike 400-500% (The Governor, I believe has stated that Natural Gas can contribute up to 30% of the cost of power). Now in this shortage situation, producers would throw up a bid (sometimes outlandish prices), just to see if the ISO would bite. I do not think that President Clinton, was "hoodwinked" by, nor a stooge of Enron. I believe there was a shortage, and because it was an election year, his options were limited. So, I believe there was a real power shortage, and market manipulation.