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

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (323619)	11/26/2002 9:13:43 PM
From: JEB	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Enron did not spur California blackouts, ISO says Tuesday November 26, 7:06 PM EST By Chris Baltimore WASHINGTON, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Contrary to earlier evidence, Enron Corp.'s (ENRNQ) trading practices did not cause the blackouts that swept California in the winter of 2001, the state's grid operator said on Tuesday. Earlier this year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) released memos detailing Enron schemes with names like "Death Star" for creating false congestion on California's electricity grid and collect payment for solving the fictitious problem. But, in a report on Tuesday, California's Independent System Operator (ISO) said that its analysis "does not indicate ... that blackouts during the winter of 2001 were attributable to any of these schemes." Instead, the report blamed basic supply and demand imbalances and a lack of transmission capacity leading from southern California to northern California for blackouts in January 2001. However, the report does not exonerate Enron from all bad behavior during the crisis, ISO spokesman Gregg Fishman said. "It doesn't mean that Enron's activities on manipulating congestion were OK," Fishman said. State Sen. Joseph Dunn, a Democrat, who is conducting an investigation of the blackouts, rejected the report, accusing the ISO of defending Enron over California's ratepayers. "I cannot figure out why the ISO continues to carry water for Enron," said Chris Schreiber, a spokesman for Dunn. The report contradicts a widely cited study by energy consultant Robert McCullough that specifically linked California's blackouts to Enron's actions. Schemes outlined in the Enron memos had "detrimental financial impacts," but would not "impact system reliability, particularly in the manner suggested by McCullough," the ISO report said. Such schemes would have impacted day-ahead and hour-ahead markets the ISO operated, but not the last-minute market that the state depended on to fill actual demand, the report said. In an interview with Reuters, McCullough played down his own findings, and accused the ISO of creating congestion on its grid to keep power from flowing out of California. "Technically it would have been possible to do what we hypothesized," McCullough said in a telephone interview. "But it turned out to be irrelevant because the ISO was congesting its own lines. The ISO was actually the cause of the congestion ... and not Enron." McCullough said his earlier findings pinning the blame on Enron were the result of incorrect data provided by the ISO. "The facts provided by the ISO were in themselves wrong," he said. ISO officials have often taken great exception to McCullough's interpretation of the facts, Fishman said. "I don't think that he has a very clear understanding of how we operate," he said. Fishman confirmed that the ISO had used a system called a "capacity benefit margin" to reserve space on the state's transmission lines. It is standard practice and is "completely above-board," Fishman said. money.excite.com