Re: Phony deregulation - Fwd: James Bennett's UPI Column for01-26-01

From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Sat Jan 27 2001 - 16:27:12 MST


At 1:51 PM -0500 1/27/01, Michael Lorrey wrote:
>No, Harvey. California is in a power deficit. It must import power from
>other regions. There are few, if any, areas of the US that are now in a
>power surplus. [....]

All true, Mike. I don't dispute anything you said. California does
have a power deficit such that it must buy power from the outside.

However, we did not see those outside suppliers run out of power. We
have not seen other states suffer blackouts such that they could no
longer supply California. When President Bush ordered the power
turned back on, we did not see an inability to do so.

What we did see is outside suppliers ready to sell power to
California as soon as they came up with the money. What we did see
is outside suppliers go ahead and supply the power after President
Bush ordered them to do so. Now California is trying to figure out
how to pay for the power now that the utilities are out of money.

Nobody opened up new oil wells or struck new veins of coal to provide
additional power. What they are opening up are new bank rolls to
purchase existing power, bankrolls that will probably come from the
taxpayers eventually. We need to fix the cost recovery pricing for
electricity and the incomplete deregulation that lead to this mess.
We do not need to produce more energy to solve California's problem
of last week. We need new energy sources to solve our over-all
problems of the future.

-- 
Harvey Newstrom <HarveyNewstrom.com>


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