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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Larry S. who wrote (22055)	4/30/2003 7:42:24 AM
From: jim_p	Respond to of 206084

DOE Looking Into FERC Commissioners' Call With Analysts Tuesday, April 29, 2003 06:58 PM ET Printer-friendly version NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--The Department of Energy is looking into whether federal energy regulators violated rules against discussing pending cases outside of official meetings, a spokeswoman for the department's office of the inspector general said Tuesday. Inspector General Gregory Friedman is probing a conference call Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Pat Wood III and Commissioner Nora Mead Brownell held with financial analysts last month to discuss actions stemming from the western power crisis of 2000-2001, including an as yet unresolved dispute over electricity supply contracts. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee of Governmental Affairs, and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, asked Friedman last week to determine whether such a call took place and to find out who participated, who arranged the call, what specific information was conveyed and whether the regulators made public the information discussed in the call. "The office of the inspector general is initiating a preliminary inquiry into the matters raised by Senators Lieberman and Cantwell," said Wilma Slaughter, spokeswoman for the inspector general. The senators had expressed concern that the commissioners may have violated FERC's own regulations against so-called "ex parte" communications when they held a password-protected conference call with a select group of Wall Street analysts in late March following a public meeting in which the commission addressed a number of disputes stemming from the western power crisis of 2000- 2001. FERC said Wood and Brownell didn't violate commission rules because the content of the analyst call mirrored that of the open meeting. The commission later posted a summary of the call on its Web site. The commission refused last week a request from Public Utility District No. 1 of Snohomish County, Wash. that Wood and Brownell recuse themselves from the decision on whether to abrogate billions of dollars in long-term power contracts signed during the crisis. The commission heard arguments last week from Nevada's two main utilities that long-term contracts they signed during the crisis should be voided because they are of a type that FERC staff found were most likely to be influenced by high spot-market prices. Sierra Pacific Resources' (SRP, news) units Nevada Power Co. (SRP, news) and Sierra Pacific Power Co. (SRP, news) has asked FERC to abrogate contracts with Allegheny Energy (AYE, news), BP PLC (BP, news), Calpine Corp. (CPN, news), Enron Corp. (ENRNQ, news), El Paso Corp. (EP, news), Mirant Corp. (MIR, news), Morgan Stanley (MWD, news), American Electric Power Co. (AEP, news) and Reliant Resources Inc. (RRI, news) . The units have settled with Duke Energy Corp. (DUK, news) . California has already renegotiated many of its contracts, but deals with Allegheny, Dynegy Inc. (DYN, news), Mirant, Morgan Stanley, Royal Dutch/Shell (RD, news) unit Coral Energy and Sempra Energy (SRE, news) remain in dispute. -By Kristen McNamara, Dow Jones Newswires, 201-938-2061; kristen.mcnamara@ dowjones.com Dow Jones Newswires 04-29-03 1858ET