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These are recordings of two Enron executives as they discuss energy trades and demonstrate the shameful way these trades were made by shameless people. Enron Tapes: High-Powered Hi-Jinks Wednesday 25 August 2004 San Francisco - Senator Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., seeking federal compensation for market manipulation during the West's 2000-2001 energy crisis, released two Enron tapes Wednesday that open old wounds in the region. In the recordings, made Aug. 3 and 4, 2000, and uncovered during an on-going investigation of the crisis, two Enron executives discuss exporting 400 megawatts of power from California - enough for nearly 400,000 homes - to take advantage of higher prices in neighboring Southwest states. At the same time, Bonneville Power Authority, in response to California's pleas, was sending emergency power to the state from its giant hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River. One of the voices on the tape belongs to Tim Belden, head of Enron's Portland, Ore., trading operations, who refers to BPA's exports as "fish kill power." By releasing more water than scheduled though its turbines, BPA endangered thousands of salmon migrating on the Columbia. "This new evidence shows that as the Northwest was scrambling to supply California with emergency power, Enron was working just as hard to manipulate energy markets by shipping power out of California to the Southwest," Cantwell said. Cantwell again called on federal energy regulators to acknowledge power prices were being driven artificially higher and to provide some financial relief. California has demanded $9 billion in refunds from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for failing to intervene in the crisis, which by 2001 spiraled out of control, triggering rolling blackouts and sending the state's biggest utility into bankruptcy. Washington consumers also paid a high price for the crisis, with BPA passing along soaring electricity costs during the shortage to the many municipal power companies it supplies throughout the state. Tim Belden, whose team cooked up "Fat Boy," "Ricochet" and other trading schemes blamed for driving up power prices in the West, pleaded guilty to federal charges of market manipulation in October 2002. Enron fell into bankruptcy in December 2001 amid a huge accounting scandal.
Jim Jelter is Industrials Editor for CBS MarketWatch in San Francisco. Published on Truthout.org |
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