Enron Mail

From:jeff.dasovich@enron.com
To:paul.kaufman@enron.com, james.steffes@enron.com, mary.hain@enron.com,karen.denne@enron.com, mona.petrochko@enron.com, susan.mara@enron.com, richard.shapiro@enron.com, sandra.mccubbin@enron.com, david.parquet@enron.com, mpalmer@enron.com
Subject:IEP Info on Industry Meeting with Rod Wright
Cc:
Bcc:
Date:Fri, 3 Nov 2000 06:45:00 -0800 (PST)

Sandi and Dave and Mike will dicuss further on the call on Monday but wanted
to disseminate info regarding the meeting that Joe Ronan of Calpine offered
on an IEP call today:

The meeting was attended by a lot of folks of all stripes.
Wright was very critical of how the Governor is handling the issue and wants
to craft a solution with the industry and then invite the Governor to get on
board.
Wright threw a whole laundry list of options on the table for folks to
consider (Dave's typing up his notes from the meeting for distribution later
today)
One of Wright's key concern is forward contracting.
The utilities said that Loretta Lynch is the problem with the onerous
"prudence" criteria she's imposing on utility forward contracts.
Those onerous criteria keep the utility from contracting.
Much discussion of what California does on the gas side, i.e., set an
objective benchmark price; if the utility beats it, they profit; if they do
worse, they take the hit. The utility, under this framework, has broad
flexibility to contract forward, i.e., PUC gets out of the way. (FYI:
Coincidentally, I suggested this approach in very broad terms--pointing to
the fact that it's already successfully in use on the gas side--during a
panel discussion that I participated in yesterday at the California Energy
Markets conference.)
The utilities told Rod Wright that they did not want, nor did they have the
expertise, to get back into the generation business.