Political Quotes

“I thank the Senator from Oregon for his stalwart attention to energy markets and to the concern that many west coast residents have over high energy costs. Senator Wyden has long been a vocal critic of what's happened in some electricity markets, and trying to figure out what has happened with the oil markets and why the west coast pays higher gas prices than any place in the country. We still wanted to know why. People say we were an isolated market, and that is why we were paying the highest gas prices. Then Hurricane Katrina hit and our prices still went up, even though we were supposedly an isolated market. So Senator Wyden has long been a person coming to the Senate, fighting for the consumer, saying we should not be gouged by higher prices on energy. Energy is the lifeblood of any economy. We know what manipulation looks like in the Northwest because we saw it with Enron. When our electricity markets were manipulated, everybody said it was the environmentalists not allowing us to construct new generating facilities. Well, when we finally exposed the audiotapes, we realized that it was just pure market manipulation. In fact, what we found out is that people were taking the futures market and basically making plays in the futures market while they also had the ability to affect the physical supply market and spot prices for electricity.…”