Friday, Oct. 4, 2002 | 5:07 a.m.
A BLOODHOUND'S NOSE wasn't necessary to smell something putrid about the sudden energy shortage and zooming high prices during 2000 -- 2001. Neighboring California had enough blackouts and brownouts to hurt its economy and the pocketbooks of every ratepayer. Nevada was spared the darkness, but power bills reached unreasonable levels for homeowners.
An angry California Gov. Gray Davis and the state's Public Utilities Commission knew they had been shafted and started investigations. Little by little they have made the case against the El Paso Corp. and last week the truth began coming out. The investigation is far from over because it includes Duke, Dynegy, Mirant, Reliant and AES/Williams. All of them are accused of having withheld electricity during that period of time. California is looking for the biggest skunk at the energy garden party.
A California study found that "on all but 2 of the 32 statewide blackout and service interruption days shown, the five biggest independent electricity generators did not supply well over 500 megawatts of power they could have generated."
But let's get back to what Chief Administrative Law Judge Curtis L. Wagner Jr. found El Paso Corp. had done when writing a decision for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. On Sept. 23 he modified and made stronger an initial decision rendered a year ago and recommended the commission institute penalty procedures.
Wagner wrote, "The Chief Judge finds that El Paso Pipeline withheld extremely large amounts of capacity that it could have flowed to its California delivery points in violation of its certificate obligation and in violation of its 10-year settlement agreement which substantially tightened the supply of natural gas at the California border significantly broadening the basis differential."
He went on to write "that El Paso Pipeline had the ability to exercise market power and that El Paso Pipeline did in fact exercise market power by withholding substantial volumes of capacity to its California delivery points, which tightened the supply and broadened the basis differential."
El Paso Corp., in a full-page New York Times whining ad directed to Congress, claims it didn't operate at capacity for safety reasons. Now we will find out if the corporation has bought enough juice to receive light penalties or none at all. The corporation gave more than $2 million to President Bush and the GOP during the past 2 1/2 years.
Looking over the list of energy corporations now being scrutinized you can find many who had executives present when Vice President Dick Cheney came down from his secret hearings on the Mount with the White House energy policies. You know, the policies that helped push nuke waste down our throats and advocated damaging the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Anything for big energy companies that can result in big dollars. Since Sept. 11, 2001, they have added national defense to bolster the weak arguments of their scheme. Rather than strengthen their case, the facts have resulted in even more skepticism.
There's no doubt that Californians were ripped off and further investigations may tell us that Nevadans also had their pockets picked by some of these corporations. I certainly wouldn't bet that Nevada ratepayers weren't victims. Would you?
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