Dianne Feinstein: “I mentioned in my remarks what really kind of clued me on to this was the price of natural gas. Right after CFMA passed…”

“I mentioned in my remarks what really kind of clued me on to this was the price of natural gas. Right after CFMA passed, we noticed the price of gas at the southern California border was $50 a decatherm--a decatherm is about enough for 900 homes--whereas in San Juan, NM, it was $8, and the transportation cost was $1. Nobody knew why it had spiked that way. So I picked up the phone. I called what is called ISO, the independent system operator, and said: Why is gas spiking this way? They did not know. Now I do not know whether Enron was doing this or not, but as soon as Enron went belly up, the next day the price of gas dropped dramatically. So it has to have been the trading that was being done that did not have a delivery directly related to it. Now people say the SEC will step in and look at this. The fact is there are no records for the SEC to look at now because there is no audit trail. There are no records kept of these trades. Somehow it is very difficult to get that across to our Members. It would get across if they were trading on the Chicago Mercantile.”