Political Quotes

“If we use cost-of-service-based on anything, that is price caps; and that works in a regulated environment. But what California did, they wanted to take advantage of deregulation and have a State deregulation, that was flawed to begin with. That is why in the State they refused to fix it until it literally drained the power from all their neighboring States during the first part of this year. Retail price caps have been in effect in California, and it has created artificially stimulated demand. It has increased the demand for natural gas. Not surprising, the removal of these retail price caps caused the consumers in California to have a 12 percent decrease because now that it has increased the cost, their demand is going down. Mr. Chairman, if we are going to help consumers in the West, we cannot afford to implement strategies that have failed in the past. This is why price caps are wrong. Either you have a regulated environment or you have a deregulated environment. You cannot have a mixture, which California wanted.”