On behalf of our members, we want to express our continuing appreciation for the leadership you and your colleagues are showing in seeking enactment of S. 1317, a bill to repeal the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, while assuring appropriate consumer and investor protection. As you know, the '35 Act imposes duplicative, unnecessary, and burdensome requirements that are outdated and do not reflect current circumstances in the gas and electric utility industry.
The City of Palm Springs, CA, has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to approve a plan allowing it to enter the electric business by installing a second electric meter at customer locations.
El Paso Natural Gas Co. (EPNG) has filed a settlement at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that resolves its general rate case with natural gas pipeline customers such as Southern California Gas Co. (SCG) as well as the question of who pays for unsubscribed capacity.
Months of confidential negotiations resulted in agreements with 95 percent of EPNG's customers, and with the California, Nevada, and Arizona commissions.
Stranded investment is mostly intrastate.
Let the states work free of uncertainty.
Recent activity in both chambers of the U. S. Congress shows federal lawmakers seeking to help the electric industry move toward competition. More than likely, election-year politics will stand in the way. Even so, Congress can go one better: It can step aside and let the states lead the way.
The greatest concern lies in stranded costs (em utility assets and obligations valued on company books at above-market levels.
Michael Baly, American Gas Association president and CEO, will chair the National Energy Foundation. He replaces Richard Lawson, president of the National Mining Association. Arthur Wiese, Jr., public affairs v.p. of the American Petroleum Institute, was elected vice chair.
Attorney Karen A. Tomcala was promoted to the staff of James J. Hoecker at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Previously, Tomcala practiced in the FERC's electric rates and corporate regulation section.
s Merger Magic
"Occasionally, yes. There are obviously some fairly easily measurable synergies in some mergers. . . . The real issue, however,
is not whether there are savings. The real issue is could those savings have been obtained without concentrating the economic power that goes with a merger?
"Generally, we've dealt with it with judgment.
s Cherry Picking
"If we ignore history, we're doomed to repeat it. And what happened in the natural gas industry is precisely what will happen. The FERC authorized deregulation of the natural gas industry and, as a consequence, today's retail consumers (em meaning residential retail consumers (em are paying more than twice as much for natural gas as the large industrial users.
So the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) won't break up the electric utility industry. But it may happen anyway (em if not at the FERC's direction, then perhaps under pressure from state regulators who, some say, are threatening to link stranded-cost recovery to vertical disaggregation.
What would a breakup mean for bonds and bondholders?
As we reported last month ("New Corporate Structures Place Bondholders at Risk," May 1, 1996, p.
The prospect of deregulation has induced a wave of mergers among electric utilities. Most of these mergers would fail an antitrust review because, by combining generation assets of interconnected utilities, they have substantially reduced potential competition in generation.