In California the regulators, the utilities and the governor all want the Federal Energy R
As part of deregulation, price caps were removed to allow for a free market. Timing is everything; natural gas prices had already skyrocketed. Demand was high from California's booming economy. No new power plants had been built here in ten years, and power producers had the right to hike prices along with demand. And hike them they did.
Loretta Lynch of the Public Utilities Commission says, "This commission and all of California was beating down the door of federal regulators to say, ' Help us impose reasonable price caps to help to keep our market stable. '"
Federal regulators did ask for longer-term contracts between power producers and the utilities to stabilize prices. The federal commission, unavailable for comment on this story, released a recent statement defending its position not to re-regulate.
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Dec. 15, 2000: "The commission's intention is to enable the markets to catch up the current supply and demand problems and not to reintroduce command and control regulation that has helped to produce the current crisis."
Some energy experts believe that, without temporary price caps, the crisis will continue.
Severin Borenstein of the U. C. Energy Institute says, "Some federal regulators have a blind commitment to making the market work and I think part of' the problem is they really don't understand what's going on."
Gary Ackerman of the Western Power Trading Forum says, "He's dead wrong about that. The federal regulators understand far better than any individual state that, though it might be painful and it certainly is painful in California, price caps don't work. They never work."
The battle between Californians and federal regulators is about ______.
A.control over the price of power
B.necessity of removing price caps
C.hiking the energy prices in California
D.a regulation concerning power supply