Enron Mail

From:kevin.kindall@enron.com
To:osman.sezgen@enron.com
Subject:EES Operational Risk
Cc:vince.kaminski@enron.com, kate.lucas@enron.com
Bcc:vince.kaminski@enron.com, kate.lucas@enron.com
Date:Mon, 8 Jan 2001 07:38:00 -0800 (PST)

Per our conversation, here is the model that I have for Simon. The notes
that I gave you were from some work I did back in September as I was looking
for volume numbers. The notes show what drives the final cash flow numbers.

Briefly, the issue surrounds exactly what is meant by nonmarket and
noncredit risk. Ideally, this would be anything that effects NPV of the
deal. However, I think that we should limit ourselves to those things that
effect the time and amount of the EAM volumes. Even here, such a problem set
is quite large. If you glance at the spreadsheet model, you will notice that
there exists a large number of possible items that effect the EAM volumes.
If we are to do this rigorously, then it is necessary to tear apart EES's
business model, and although such an attempt to do so would be noble, the
scope of such an excercise may be too large. We need a clear definition of
EES Operational Risk.

Briefly, from the EES deals that I have looked at, two things drive their
profit: a long term bet that power prices will go down, and that we can
improve the facility through various enhancements. Each of these may be
gleaned from the spreadsheet, as well as the assumptions regarding the
funding of the facility improvements and so on. 95% of the savings is
assumed to come from power, and 5% from gas. (The effeciency gain may not be
explicitly given). If we have data that show the realized efficiency gains,
then it would be simple [in principle] to determine a distribution, and hence
a distribution of EAM volumes, NPV's, etc. At this time, I understand that
RAC has determined some of the realized efficiency gains, but my knowledge is
quite sketchy. Jay Hachen may have more info.

If I get a chance, I will try to see if I can do a "proof of concept"
excercise, but I have a late January deadline on something else.

Another point: even if we are successful in doing this for the spreadsheet
model, EES has chosen to book things differently. I do not have a thorough
understanding of their IT systems, but at least in principle, if we can do
this for the spreadsheet model, then we can do it in their IT environment
(data are data are data). They may book efficiency gains through improvement
type, such as gains due to compressors, chillers, boilers, etc. If this is
indeed the case, then we need to have distributions for each type of
improvement.

If we are successful on the spreadsheet and not successful with their IT
systems, then the other alternative is to build our own reporting system. It
would be similar to a database where the recordsets are replaced by Excel
workbooks. It can be constructed in such a way as to enable us to run
simulations and queries, but this would probably take me about five or six
weeks.

Finally, Don Hawkins does Operational Audits for Enron's physical assets.
He sends out teams to audit our pipelines and strategic assets. I don't
think that he does it for EES, but you might want to give him a call anyway.

-Kevin K.

PS: The EES lunch meeting has been moved to Wednesdays. Jay Hachen will
know more.