Related Articles
CA ENERGY CRISIS UPDATE May 18, 2001 DELAY OF BOND SALE JEOPARDIZES POWER CONTRACTS California could lose more than 40% of the power it has lined up in long-term contracts because Republican lawmakers delayed the bond sale needed to pay for the power. Sixteen of the 28 contracts signed so far have provisions that allow the companies to walk away from the agreement if the state does not sell the bonds by July 1. In jeopardy of being lost are 2,300 megawatts of low-cost power the state has lined up over the next six months and 29,000 megawatts over the next 10 years. Without the contracted power, the state will be forced to buy even more power on the high-priced spot marketif the power is available at all. The bond sale was delayed until mid-August when Republicans refused to support an emergency measure to expedite the bond sale. A spokesman for Gov. Gray Davis said that taxpayers could end up paying 75% more for energy because of the delay in the bond sale. INVESTIGATORS FIND EVIDENCE OF POWER CARTEL State investigators have uncovered evidence that a cartel of power companies shut down plants for unnecessary maintenance to ratchet up prices, California Public Utilities Corporation President Loretta Lynch charged in an interview with the Los Angeles Times published May 18. Lynch said the CPUC was working with the state attorney generals office to probe patterns of plant outages that have created artificial shortages. And it is clear that there are instances that plants, when called to produce, chose not to produce, even when they were obligated to do so under special contracts with the state and utility companies, Lynch said. She said the ongoing investigation had produced enough information for the CPUC and attorney general to take legal action against the generators next month. A Los Angeles Times analysis of state data found that throughout the last two months, about 12,000 megawatts of production was offline, more than a third of the peak power used in California on a typical day. By contrast, shutdowns in the same period of 1999 and 2000 took only 3,300 to 5,700 megawatts offline. BUSHS ENERGY PLAN WONT HELP CALIFORNIA President Bushs long-awaited energy plan was unveiled on May 17, but it contained nothing to control runaway wholesale energy prices that threaten an economic catastrophe in California. State economic analysts said the plan fails California by viewing the power crisis as an ongoing emergency rather than a temporary one. Californias supply crunch should ease dramatically by summer 2003, once 27 new power plants15 of them licensed, 12 in the pipelinestart production. Bushs plan calls for expedited procedures for power plant siting, a step California already took last February. And Bush has failed to take action in two areas that could help ease Californias current crisis: He refuses to impose price caps on wholesale power. And he has failed to embraceand has even underminedefficiency programs that could quickly reduce demand. Earlier this year, for example, Bush rolled back efficiency standards for air conditioners, a move that critics say will require the country to build 43 new power plants. The Bush administration underestimates how much can be accomplished with energy efficiency and how much cheaper that would be for businesses and residents, said California State Sen. Debra Bowen. You dont have to be a member of the Sierra Club to believe in that. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri said Bushs report, which emphasizes increased oil and gas exploration, really looks like the Exxon Mobile annual report, and maybe thats really what it is. For Big Oil and other suppliers, the Bush energy plan is a dream come true, said Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. But among those most left behind are the people and businesses of California who have been under siege by electricity and natural gas marketers bent on gouging every cent they can.
|
|
