Background Materials for the INGAA Board Meeting

FYI
---------------------- Forwarded by Shelley Corman/ET&S/Enron on 04/12/2000
11:49 AM ---------------------------

Shelley Corman
04/12/2000 11:45 AM
To: Robert Hill/NPNG/Enron@ENRON
cc: Jeffrey Keeler/Corp/Enron@ENRON, Cynthia Sandherr/Corp/Enron@ENRON

Subject: Background Materials for the INGAA Board Meeting

Bob,
I generally prepare a package of briefing materials for Stan Horton prior to
INGAA Board meetings. Since you are attending in his place, I'm planning on
doing the same for you. I'll forward a complete package tomorrow. In the
meantime, I wanted to give you a heads up on two issues that will likely come
up at the meeting.

Pipeline safety. There is a great deal of activity of this issue. The
accident in Bellingham Washington has politicians taking the opportunity to
push for tougher state oversight authority and more money to the states.
Last week a grass roots group called the National Pipeline Coalition met to
rally support for state oversight. INGAA's general reaction has been to
distinguish gas and liquids lines and refer to the gas pipeline safety
record. To the extent that we have distinquishing factual (not hypothetical)
date, think this information will be useful in any substantive pipeline
safety legislation. However, the more immediate issue is appropriations.
Jeff Keehler reports that while safety legislation is not likely this year,
he is certain that we will confront appropriations issues in the form of
higher user fees. INGAA's approach has been to say absolutely that user fees
for gas pipelines should not be increased. When we met with Stan Horton last
week, he felt like we should develop a compromise position on some level of
user fee increases that we could support if spent on pipeline damage
prevention (one call) and other public education efforts. Jeff agrees that a
compromise might be a good political solution, allowing the Washington
congressional members to claim victory in bringing home more money to the
states. Jeff plans to finish his memo on our compromise position in the next
day or so. The next step will be convincing INGAA to look at some compromise
rather than flatly rejecting user fees. It may be appropriate for Enron to
ask that INGAA set up a meeting of the Board level safety task force to
consider such a compromise.
Electric Restructuring Legislation. Cynthia Sanherr informs me that several
of the combined gas/electric utility members (e.g. Duke) are lobbying INGAA
to change its position on pending electric legislation in a direction that is
counter Enron's interests. I need to get more detailed notes from Cynthia
and will include in your Board package. She expects this to come up at the
Board meeting.