California governor asks Clinton's aid on supplies Updated 8:10 PM ET January 13, 2001 LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Gov. Gray Davis has asked President Clinton to invoke emergency powers to make three out-of-state natural gas companies keep selling their gas to California's largest utility, a statement released Saturday said. Davis urged Clinton to invoke provisions of the 1978 Natural Gas Policy Act to require natural gas producers outside California to continue gas sales to San Francisco-based Pacific Gas and Electric, a unit of PG&E Corp. .

"There is an immediate impact to public welfare based on the prospect of natural gas interruptions," Davis said in a letter to Clinton that asked for "prompt consideration" of the request.

Last week, the financially strapped utility appealed to Davis for state aid in buying gas for its 3.8 million gas customers, saying that as many as 15 to 20 of its supplier companies had refused to sell to it on credit and that gas reserves in its three storage facilities were dwindling.

PG&E sells gas directly to households and businesses and uses the gas to power electricity generation plants in northern and central California.

Davis has not responded publicly to that plea yet, but in the statement issued Saturday, he cited three out-of-state companies as having threatened to cut off supplies to Pacific Gas and Electric: Duke Energy Corp. of Charlotte, North Carolina, Western Gas and J. Aron & Company.

Representatives of the companies were not immediately available to comment.

If granted, the emergency decree would be similar to an existing government order requiring power generators and marketers to sell surplus electricity to the California market. The U.S. Energy Department renewed that temporary decree for another week Thursday.

Davis took part by telephone in an emergency conference earlier Saturday at the Energy Department chaired by Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. It was the fifth day of talks aimed at bringing down wholesale power prices in California and keeping the state's two major utilities from bankruptcy.

Soaring wholesale power prices and a legal restraint from passing those costs on to consumers have drained more than $12 billion from PG&E and Edison International, shutting them off from new credit from banks and many suppliers.

http://search.excite.com/r/sr=newswires|ss=natural+gas;http://news.excite.com/news/r/010113/20/utilities-california-davis

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 13, 2001

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This sounds like it's going from worse to worse to worse yet.

-- Uncle Fred (dogboy45@bigfoot.com), January 13, 2001.