It looks like Enron Executives went to the same school as all the honest executives from the California Energy companies. And I am sure that Forbes has all incorrect information about wonderful honest company like Enron.
What a bunch of BS.
--------
Enron executives got $55 Million just before bankruptcy hours before giving the pink slips to al least 4500 employees, and sticking it to all their share holders.
Here is a story that will be covered in tomorrows NY Times and is also available online at Forbes.com http://www.forbes.co.../1205enron.html
I can't remember the numbers but I think it was something like 70 million to PG&E execs prior to their bankruptcy.
How do I get a job like that where I screw shareholders and employees and get boat load of money for it? (oh wait I work for a dot com)
On the US Energy Crisis
Started by
MJ
, May 21 2001 02:54 PM
44 replies to this topic
#41
Azat
-
- Members
-
- 8,969 posts
Veteran
- Gender:Male
- Location:Los Angeles, CA
- Interests:wine, beer, food, art, jokes
Posted 06 December 2001 - 11:16 PM
#42
Azat
-
- Members
-
- 8,969 posts
Veteran
- Gender:Male
- Location:Los Angeles, CA
- Interests:wine, beer, food, art, jokes
Posted 15 January 2002 - 10:42 AM
More info on the "deregulation" king Enron and what went wrong.
http://www.msnbc.com...994.asp?pne=msn
http://www.msnbc.com...994.asp?pne=msn
#43
Azat
-
- Members
-
- 8,969 posts
Veteran
- Gender:Male
- Location:Los Angeles, CA
- Interests:wine, beer, food, art, jokes
Posted 09 May 2002 - 03:17 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said Thursday he believes Enron Corp. broke laws while manipulating electricity supply and prices during the California energy crisis.
``I don't think there's any doubt that somebody ought to go to jail and that we ought to find a way through public policy to fix a system that needs to be addressed,'' said Daschle, D-S.D.
He said the Senate will seek to find ways to protect consumers and address price manipulation by power companies, but doesn't believe a complete overhaul of the electricity industry is needed.
``I don't think the system is broken, I think laws were broken,'' Daschle said.
Meantime, two Senate panels plan to investigate energy price manipulation in California and other Western states.
The Energy and Natural Resources Committee scheduled a hearing Wednesday that will include Pat Wood, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman. The Senate Commerce consumer subcommittee also will hold a hearing Wednesday, said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
The hearings were prompted by the release of Enron documents that described how the energy trading company sought to cash in on California's energy crisis in 2000 and 2001. During the crisis, wholesale energy prices shot up tenfold.
FERC, which released the documents this week, has asked more than 150 power generators, marketers and utilities to disclose whether they used similar practices. FERC gave the companies until May 22 to comply.
At a news conference Thursday, Democrats from California, Washington and Oregon criticized FERC, saying it was slow to act during the California crisis, waiting months to impose price caps.
``We told them Enron and others were gaming the system. So my question to FERC is, 'What took you so long?''' Boxer said.
Lawmakers and California Gov. Gray Davis also have asked the Justice Department to investigate energy trading practices in California.
``I don't think there's any doubt that somebody ought to go to jail and that we ought to find a way through public policy to fix a system that needs to be addressed,'' said Daschle, D-S.D.
He said the Senate will seek to find ways to protect consumers and address price manipulation by power companies, but doesn't believe a complete overhaul of the electricity industry is needed.
``I don't think the system is broken, I think laws were broken,'' Daschle said.
Meantime, two Senate panels plan to investigate energy price manipulation in California and other Western states.
The Energy and Natural Resources Committee scheduled a hearing Wednesday that will include Pat Wood, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman. The Senate Commerce consumer subcommittee also will hold a hearing Wednesday, said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
The hearings were prompted by the release of Enron documents that described how the energy trading company sought to cash in on California's energy crisis in 2000 and 2001. During the crisis, wholesale energy prices shot up tenfold.
FERC, which released the documents this week, has asked more than 150 power generators, marketers and utilities to disclose whether they used similar practices. FERC gave the companies until May 22 to comply.
At a news conference Thursday, Democrats from California, Washington and Oregon criticized FERC, saying it was slow to act during the California crisis, waiting months to impose price caps.
``We told them Enron and others were gaming the system. So my question to FERC is, 'What took you so long?''' Boxer said.
Lawmakers and California Gov. Gray Davis also have asked the Justice Department to investigate energy trading practices in California.
#44
Azat
-
- Members
-
- 8,969 posts
Veteran
- Gender:Male
- Location:Los Angeles, CA
- Interests:wine, beer, food, art, jokes
Posted 30 July 2002 - 10:24 PM
My guess would be that in couple of years if power plants collude again and decide to screw the California public again, the public would be blamed once again for not "allowing" them to build more power plants. Never mind that they do not wish to invest money when they are not making 100000000000000 times the return on their investment.
--------
Power Plants Put on Hold
Energy: Lower demand, changing circumstances have companies pulling back from crisis plans.
By E. SCOTT RECKARD, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Power companies have delayed or canceled more than half the new plants proposed during California's energy crisis, citing lower demand, falling electricity prices, Wall Street's reluctance to finance projects and stifling regulations.
Since 2000, energy producers have pulled the plug on power plants that would have generated nearly 3,000 megawatts of power--enough to light up 2.2 million homes, according to the state Energy Commission. Adding in projects that have been delayed, the total is closer to 20,000 megawatts, federal regulators say.
Following the severe shortages of 2000-2001, a burst of construction provided large amounts of needed power to the state. But the slowing economy, conservation and plentiful hydroelectric power have turned the shortage into a glut.
The glut, combined with questions over the energy sector's credibility in the wake of the Enron Corp. scandal, has regulators, industry executives and consumer groups fearful that another crisis is a few years away.
"We're at a crossroads right now," said Suzanne Garfield, a spokeswoman for the California Energy Commission. "There's been a lot built but a lot more is needed. We need to retire many old plants, and imports are decreasing as nearby states use more of their own power."
As a result of the Enron scandal, much of the energy sector has come under a harsh spotlight, and companies now find themselves unable to access the financial markets for capital.
The industry's struggles are evident at Redlands, Calif. There, at AES Corp.'s Mountainview facility, a few workers stand watch over a foundation where 500 laborers once toiled over what was to have been an $800-million power-generating plant.
AES poured more than $100 million into the project before the firm's own retrenchment and the unwillingness of Wall Street to provide financing forced it to suspend work two months ago on the plant, designed to provide power for 800,000 homes.
Mark Woodruff, an AES regional manager, blamed restrictions imposed by Gov. Gray Davis' rescue plan, especially the state's refusal to let AES and other power sellers strike supply deals directly with large business users.
The Mountainview plant in Redlands is "pretty much a ghost town now," said David Kehnes, project manager for Arlington, Va.-based AES, which still operates a smaller plant nearby. "And we're a skeleton crew."
Similar scenes are apparent throughout the industry, eight months after the collapse of Enron started a landslide loss of faith in U.S. business practices.
UC Irvine professor and energy commentator Peter Navarro says the energy companies, having manipulated the energy market, badly overestimated demand, buried themselves in debt to build new plants and were surprised when the economy slowed.
"The mind set was that these higher prices would last forever," Navarro said. "But when prices fall to a third of where they'd been, Wall Street figures out pretty quickly you don't have cash to service your debts.
"This could turn what looked like a 5-year glut of power into probably a 2-to-3-year glut," he added.
Announcing Monday that a big new Monterey County plant had come on line, Gov. Gray Davis boasted that California had added 4,165 megawatts of in-state power since last summer, enough to power more than 3 million homes. But the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said this month that the net addition will be closer to 3,100 by year end because some existing plants will be decommissioned.
At a U.S. Senate energy committee meeting last week, FERC Chairman Pat Wood said projected construction of crucial generating and transmission infrastructure has "dropped off dramatically" as corporate downgrades by bond analysts "dramatically escalate the cost of credit in this industry."
Power generators such as AES are "in the throes of a costly boom and bust cycle," testified Larry Makovich, a senior consultant at Cambridge Energy Research Associates. He estimated that since the start of the year power plants capable of producing nearly 82,000 megawatts have been canceled or postponed across the nation.
While no one is predicting anything like the shortages and soaring prices seen in 2000 and 2001, California still must depend on having manufacturers voluntarily cut production to get by on the hottest days, as happened July 10.
To Mirant Corp. executives, that shows "there's a current supply-demand imbalance" in California, spokesman David Payne said. For that reason, he said, the company fully intends to build a 530-watt Contra Costa plant originally set to open in 2003.
But Mirant, whose bonds are categorized as junk by Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's, delayed the plant as part of a $2-billion cut in capital spending this year to shore up its balance sheet. A separate Mirant proposal to build another large plant at its Potrero facility in Northern California has been held up for years by permit disputes, Payne said.
Calpine Corp., a San Jose-based power plant builder with a once fast-growing trading arm, was hit early by the credit and liquidity crisis created by the downfall of Enron, the largest of the energy traders. Calpine's money woes appear to have stabilized, but not before it slashed its plant-building budget and significantly slowed many projects.
In California, Calpine opened three major power plants and four smaller "peaker" units in the last year. But completion of three more big power plants capable of generating has been pushed back several months into 2004.
Company spokesman Bill Highlander said the delays in California are the result of the state's tortuous permitting process as well as Calpine's financial woes.
Davis spokesman Steve Maviglio said complaints about regulations and permits in the state are nothing new, adding that the fact that companies are scaling back nationwide shows the problems aren't specific to California. Long-term power contracts with producers, though much criticized, will assure a supply of electricity no matter what happens, and Davis' plan authorized the state itself to build plants if private power proves insufficient, Maviglio said.
He said the biggest problem for power generators is the current unwillingness of Wall Street to finance them--a problem that is undeniably fearsome.
At a briefing for investors Friday, Fitch analysts noted that debt defaults by corporations, which in the 1990s had been running less than $10 billion a year, zoomed to $28 billion in 2000. Defaults hit $78 billion in 2001 and $50 billion through the first half of 2002.
High on the ratings firm's watch list these days is the energy industry, where credit downgrades have outpaced upgrades by 18-1 so far this year.
Fitch managing director Richard Hunter said the "heady cocktail" of lower prices, a credit crunch, Enron-style sham deals and potential litigation is exerting "extreme stress" on the industry.
One hopeful sign in California is that most of the proposed plants have only been delayed and not canceled outright, according to Bob Aldrich, a state official who keeps a running tab on the power-plant situation.
But at the same time, the uncertainty is aggravated by the fact that many power concerns are under investigation for the allegedly phony deals that critics say upset the energy markets and contributed to California's crisis in 2000 and 2001.
"My industry's so demonized. I feel like the new tobacco," said Mark Byron, Dynegy Inc.'s California director of retail energy services until he was laid off in June. The energy industry "is an ocean of ex-employees," Byron said.
In addition to state probes, investigations are under way by FERC, the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission--all of which provides fodder for those who contend the industry should never have been deregulated in the first place.
"We don't need to rely on these companies [and] after what they did to us in 2001, we should not rely on them," said Douglas Heller of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in Santa Monica. "We must remember that these companies failed California long before they failed their shareholders."
http://www.latimes.c...2040.story?null
--------
Power Plants Put on Hold
Energy: Lower demand, changing circumstances have companies pulling back from crisis plans.
By E. SCOTT RECKARD, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Power companies have delayed or canceled more than half the new plants proposed during California's energy crisis, citing lower demand, falling electricity prices, Wall Street's reluctance to finance projects and stifling regulations.
Since 2000, energy producers have pulled the plug on power plants that would have generated nearly 3,000 megawatts of power--enough to light up 2.2 million homes, according to the state Energy Commission. Adding in projects that have been delayed, the total is closer to 20,000 megawatts, federal regulators say.
Following the severe shortages of 2000-2001, a burst of construction provided large amounts of needed power to the state. But the slowing economy, conservation and plentiful hydroelectric power have turned the shortage into a glut.
The glut, combined with questions over the energy sector's credibility in the wake of the Enron Corp. scandal, has regulators, industry executives and consumer groups fearful that another crisis is a few years away.
"We're at a crossroads right now," said Suzanne Garfield, a spokeswoman for the California Energy Commission. "There's been a lot built but a lot more is needed. We need to retire many old plants, and imports are decreasing as nearby states use more of their own power."
As a result of the Enron scandal, much of the energy sector has come under a harsh spotlight, and companies now find themselves unable to access the financial markets for capital.
The industry's struggles are evident at Redlands, Calif. There, at AES Corp.'s Mountainview facility, a few workers stand watch over a foundation where 500 laborers once toiled over what was to have been an $800-million power-generating plant.
AES poured more than $100 million into the project before the firm's own retrenchment and the unwillingness of Wall Street to provide financing forced it to suspend work two months ago on the plant, designed to provide power for 800,000 homes.
Mark Woodruff, an AES regional manager, blamed restrictions imposed by Gov. Gray Davis' rescue plan, especially the state's refusal to let AES and other power sellers strike supply deals directly with large business users.
The Mountainview plant in Redlands is "pretty much a ghost town now," said David Kehnes, project manager for Arlington, Va.-based AES, which still operates a smaller plant nearby. "And we're a skeleton crew."
Similar scenes are apparent throughout the industry, eight months after the collapse of Enron started a landslide loss of faith in U.S. business practices.
UC Irvine professor and energy commentator Peter Navarro says the energy companies, having manipulated the energy market, badly overestimated demand, buried themselves in debt to build new plants and were surprised when the economy slowed.
"The mind set was that these higher prices would last forever," Navarro said. "But when prices fall to a third of where they'd been, Wall Street figures out pretty quickly you don't have cash to service your debts.
"This could turn what looked like a 5-year glut of power into probably a 2-to-3-year glut," he added.
Announcing Monday that a big new Monterey County plant had come on line, Gov. Gray Davis boasted that California had added 4,165 megawatts of in-state power since last summer, enough to power more than 3 million homes. But the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said this month that the net addition will be closer to 3,100 by year end because some existing plants will be decommissioned.
At a U.S. Senate energy committee meeting last week, FERC Chairman Pat Wood said projected construction of crucial generating and transmission infrastructure has "dropped off dramatically" as corporate downgrades by bond analysts "dramatically escalate the cost of credit in this industry."
Power generators such as AES are "in the throes of a costly boom and bust cycle," testified Larry Makovich, a senior consultant at Cambridge Energy Research Associates. He estimated that since the start of the year power plants capable of producing nearly 82,000 megawatts have been canceled or postponed across the nation.
While no one is predicting anything like the shortages and soaring prices seen in 2000 and 2001, California still must depend on having manufacturers voluntarily cut production to get by on the hottest days, as happened July 10.
To Mirant Corp. executives, that shows "there's a current supply-demand imbalance" in California, spokesman David Payne said. For that reason, he said, the company fully intends to build a 530-watt Contra Costa plant originally set to open in 2003.
But Mirant, whose bonds are categorized as junk by Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's, delayed the plant as part of a $2-billion cut in capital spending this year to shore up its balance sheet. A separate Mirant proposal to build another large plant at its Potrero facility in Northern California has been held up for years by permit disputes, Payne said.
Calpine Corp., a San Jose-based power plant builder with a once fast-growing trading arm, was hit early by the credit and liquidity crisis created by the downfall of Enron, the largest of the energy traders. Calpine's money woes appear to have stabilized, but not before it slashed its plant-building budget and significantly slowed many projects.
In California, Calpine opened three major power plants and four smaller "peaker" units in the last year. But completion of three more big power plants capable of generating has been pushed back several months into 2004.
Company spokesman Bill Highlander said the delays in California are the result of the state's tortuous permitting process as well as Calpine's financial woes.
Davis spokesman Steve Maviglio said complaints about regulations and permits in the state are nothing new, adding that the fact that companies are scaling back nationwide shows the problems aren't specific to California. Long-term power contracts with producers, though much criticized, will assure a supply of electricity no matter what happens, and Davis' plan authorized the state itself to build plants if private power proves insufficient, Maviglio said.
He said the biggest problem for power generators is the current unwillingness of Wall Street to finance them--a problem that is undeniably fearsome.
At a briefing for investors Friday, Fitch analysts noted that debt defaults by corporations, which in the 1990s had been running less than $10 billion a year, zoomed to $28 billion in 2000. Defaults hit $78 billion in 2001 and $50 billion through the first half of 2002.
High on the ratings firm's watch list these days is the energy industry, where credit downgrades have outpaced upgrades by 18-1 so far this year.
Fitch managing director Richard Hunter said the "heady cocktail" of lower prices, a credit crunch, Enron-style sham deals and potential litigation is exerting "extreme stress" on the industry.
One hopeful sign in California is that most of the proposed plants have only been delayed and not canceled outright, according to Bob Aldrich, a state official who keeps a running tab on the power-plant situation.
But at the same time, the uncertainty is aggravated by the fact that many power concerns are under investigation for the allegedly phony deals that critics say upset the energy markets and contributed to California's crisis in 2000 and 2001.
"My industry's so demonized. I feel like the new tobacco," said Mark Byron, Dynegy Inc.'s California director of retail energy services until he was laid off in June. The energy industry "is an ocean of ex-employees," Byron said.
In addition to state probes, investigations are under way by FERC, the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission--all of which provides fodder for those who contend the industry should never have been deregulated in the first place.
"We don't need to rely on these companies [and] after what they did to us in 2001, we should not rely on them," said Douglas Heller of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in Santa Monica. "We must remember that these companies failed California long before they failed their shareholders."
http://www.latimes.c...2040.story?null
#45
Azat
-
- Members
-
- 8,969 posts
Veteran
- Gender:Male
- Location:Los Angeles, CA
- Interests:wine, beer, food, art, jokes
Posted 22 October 2002 - 09:24 PM
Here is some more proof.
------------------
Key Enron Trader Pleads Guilty
The Associated Press, Fri 18 Oct 2002
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A former Enron trader accused of masterminding a scheme to drive up energy prices during California's power crisis has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the first public acknowledgment of criminal activity related to the crisis.
Timothy Belden, the former head of trading in Enron's Portland, Ore., office, on Thursday admitted to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Belden's plea is the first prosecution of anyone related to the West's energy crisis. He faces up to five years in prison and must forfeit $2.1 million.
``I did it because I was trying to maximize profit for Enron,'' Belden told U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins.
The case represents a remarkable evolution in the Bush administration's attitude about the energy crisis. In May 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney said California was to blame for power shortages and soaring prices. ``They caused it themselves,'' Cheney said in an interview with The Associated Press.
On Thursday, Republican appointees in the Justice Department said unequivocally that criminal conduct by an Enron trader helped drive up prices.
``These charges answer the question that has long troubled California consumers: whether the energy crisis was spurred in part by criminal activity. The answer is a resounding yes,'' U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan said.
Belden promised to cooperate with state and federal prosecutors as well as any non-criminal effort to investigate the energy industry. He remains free on $500,000 bail pending his sentencing April 17.
His knowledge should help the government unravel what happened inside other energy trading companies, including Houston-based Enron, the energy giant whose collapse last year has roiled the energy industry, said Matthew Jacobs, the federal prosecutor handling the case.
Belden's attorney, Cristina Arguedas, said he was following Enron's instructions as he handled his trades and will ``make amends for that by cooperating with the government and telling the complete truth about Enron's actions in the California energy trading market.''
``Tim Belden is not a high-level executive who was lining his pockets out of greed,'' Arguedas said. ``He did his job.''
Investigators for a state Senate committee looking into the energy market have long considered Belden a key player in Enron's activities in California.
Belden was ``the mastermind behind the strategies described'' in memos that spelled out how Enron manipulated the California market, said Chris Schreiber, an attorney working with California's Senate Select Committee to Investigate Price Manipulation of the Wholesale Energy Market.
``He's been on our radar for a long time,'' Schreiber added.
Belden is the third Enron figure to be prosecuted.
Andrew Fastow, Enron's former chief financial officer, is accused of devising the company's complex web of off-the-books partnerships used to hide some $1 billion in debt from shareholders and federal regulators and is charged with money laundering, fraud and conspiracy.
A once-trusted Fastow aide, Michael Kopper, pleaded guilty in August to money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
For months, federal investigators have worked with a California Senate panel investigating the state's energy crisis about evidence uncovered in its long-running investigation of market manipulation. A federal grand jury in San Francisco has been weighing criminal charges related to the energy crisis.
Internal company memos, first released in May, describe how Belden's trading unit took power out of California at a time of rolling blackouts and shortages and sold it out of state to elude price caps, according to documents obtained by investigators.
Enron bought California power at cheap, capped prices, routed it outside the state, and then sold it back into California at vastly inflated prices, authorities said. The sham trades were designed to circumvent the California-only price caps on wholesale energy.
------------------
Key Enron Trader Pleads Guilty
The Associated Press, Fri 18 Oct 2002
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A former Enron trader accused of masterminding a scheme to drive up energy prices during California's power crisis has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the first public acknowledgment of criminal activity related to the crisis.
Timothy Belden, the former head of trading in Enron's Portland, Ore., office, on Thursday admitted to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Belden's plea is the first prosecution of anyone related to the West's energy crisis. He faces up to five years in prison and must forfeit $2.1 million.
``I did it because I was trying to maximize profit for Enron,'' Belden told U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins.
The case represents a remarkable evolution in the Bush administration's attitude about the energy crisis. In May 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney said California was to blame for power shortages and soaring prices. ``They caused it themselves,'' Cheney said in an interview with The Associated Press.
On Thursday, Republican appointees in the Justice Department said unequivocally that criminal conduct by an Enron trader helped drive up prices.
``These charges answer the question that has long troubled California consumers: whether the energy crisis was spurred in part by criminal activity. The answer is a resounding yes,'' U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan said.
Belden promised to cooperate with state and federal prosecutors as well as any non-criminal effort to investigate the energy industry. He remains free on $500,000 bail pending his sentencing April 17.
His knowledge should help the government unravel what happened inside other energy trading companies, including Houston-based Enron, the energy giant whose collapse last year has roiled the energy industry, said Matthew Jacobs, the federal prosecutor handling the case.
Belden's attorney, Cristina Arguedas, said he was following Enron's instructions as he handled his trades and will ``make amends for that by cooperating with the government and telling the complete truth about Enron's actions in the California energy trading market.''
``Tim Belden is not a high-level executive who was lining his pockets out of greed,'' Arguedas said. ``He did his job.''
Investigators for a state Senate committee looking into the energy market have long considered Belden a key player in Enron's activities in California.
Belden was ``the mastermind behind the strategies described'' in memos that spelled out how Enron manipulated the California market, said Chris Schreiber, an attorney working with California's Senate Select Committee to Investigate Price Manipulation of the Wholesale Energy Market.
``He's been on our radar for a long time,'' Schreiber added.
Belden is the third Enron figure to be prosecuted.
Andrew Fastow, Enron's former chief financial officer, is accused of devising the company's complex web of off-the-books partnerships used to hide some $1 billion in debt from shareholders and federal regulators and is charged with money laundering, fraud and conspiracy.
A once-trusted Fastow aide, Michael Kopper, pleaded guilty in August to money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
For months, federal investigators have worked with a California Senate panel investigating the state's energy crisis about evidence uncovered in its long-running investigation of market manipulation. A federal grand jury in San Francisco has been weighing criminal charges related to the energy crisis.
Internal company memos, first released in May, describe how Belden's trading unit took power out of California at a time of rolling blackouts and shortages and sold it out of state to elude price caps, according to documents obtained by investigators.
Enron bought California power at cheap, capped prices, routed it outside the state, and then sold it back into California at vastly inflated prices, authorities said. The sham trades were designed to circumvent the California-only price caps on wholesale energy.
0 user(s) are reading this topic
0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users
