Lax Oversight Blamed for High Gas Prices

[ozymandius]

story

WASHINGTON - Too little oversight of financial markets — not supply and demand problems — are to blame for skyrocketing natural gas prices, top law enforcement officials in four Midwestern states said Tuesday.

Comparing natural gas trading to "the wild, wild West," the attorneys general from Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin urged Congress to increase regulation of markets they say are vulnerable to abuse and manipulation.

The officials — all Democrats — issued a six-month study of natural gas prices. They said they want to debunk the commonly held view that a lack of supply and surging demand are responsible for sharp price increases that have caused a 25 percent to 30 percent rise in winter heating bills in the Midwest and elsewhere.

"It's stunningly annoying to sit here and have to literally say the moon is not made of green cheese," Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon said at a news conference. "Supply and demand did not cause the spikes."

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[Journeyman]

1. All I know is, here in California the "energy crisis" and . . .

the sky-high prices disappeared overnight when Jeffords went Independent and threw the Senate to the Democrats.

[keopeli]

2. ...while Bush* played his fiddle. It was the year of the thieves. n/t

[Journeyman]

3. I call 'em "Pirates" . . .

they ruined a friend's life that year . . . his grocery store was barely making it as it was, but when energy costs jumped into the stratosphere he just couldn't keep up. . . he lost his store, some 2 dozen employees lost their jobs, and a community lost its only market . . .

[lapfog_1]

4. Actually, the rolling brown outs

disappeared from CA right after Gov. Davis signed a long term electricity contract with a set of energy companies, at rates much closer to the spot market rate than the previous long term rate (like 5 times higher than previous long term rates... I think it went from $.025 per Kwh to .11 per Kwh, but I could be misremembering the actual numbers). The new rate was guaranteed by the state, so the state auditor marked it as part of the state expenditures (not taking into account that most of the hike would be passed along to ratepayers)... big deficit in the state budget... recall election (remember the "open the books" and "cut the fat out of the budget" promise by the gropenator?). Davis is gone, all of sudden a number of electric plants that were "down for maintenance" and so on were back online and "presto" - no more electric supply problems.

Then listen to the Enron energy trader tapes again...

These bastards should be exiled to Antarctica or something (at least made to live with rolling blackouts everyday for the rest of their miserable lives). All of them (every employee above first level supervisor).

CA should have floated a huge new 10 year bond measure ($100 billion or more) which it would have guaranteed by the ratepayers of the newly state run and owned PUBLIC utilities, pushed for not just a few more natural gas electric plants, but a whole replacement of the central grid with a distributed grid which is renewable based (using the latest in solar, tidal, geothermal, and wind power systems). Should have imported Al Gore or the Big Dawg to head up the new public utility corporation, kicked some Enron and Dynergy Ass, and kept Gray Davis in office. And, while he was at it, spend another big chunk of bond money and taxpayer money to set up and fund nanotech companies and attract the next "silicon valley miracle" to the state. (also more for biotec, especially as it applies to things like stem cell research - at least we did part of that!)