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Enron Mail |
John, Rick asked me to forward the atteched to you directly.
__________________ __________________ I spoke with Bill Hawkins (Premier's Office) to day and made the following points: a) the messages from the Premier/Wilson are still ambiguous and unclear; b) we will need clarification on three questions: 1) Is May 2002 a deadline (as per Wilson) or a target (as per Harris)?; 2) Is the gov't still prepared to consider a Fall opening if the 4 conditions are met?; and 3) Is the return of the first Pickering A unit a pre-condition to market opening? - if it is, then any question about a Fall opening is moot since the earliest that unit will come back is December 31, 2001 (and more likely later). I did not press Bill for answers today but indicated that we would need clarification on these issues as soon as possible to stay engaged in the way that he wants us to. I outlined the interpretation that we had been encouraged by Ministry of Energy to put on the message. Importantly, Bill did not "shut down" our preferred interpretation. Bill made three points: a) the critical factor in the announcement was continuing concern about the circumstances in California and the difficulties that California presents for making the decision to press ahead this year; b) on the political front, the key opposition to moving ahead will come from the NDP rather than the Liberals: he wants us to help keep the Liberals on the sidelines; and c) the gov't (Ministry of Energy) is going to work on fleshing out over the next several weeks how they will assess when the 4 conditions will be satisfied and he wanted our help in that process. I told Bill that we wanted to stay engaged but that our immediate interest was getting appropriate clarification of the message. Following Bill's call, I heard from Joel Singer, VP at OPG, who indicated that Floyd Laughren had assured OPG yesterday that the OEB was still targeting a Fall opening in its retail readiness efforts. Singer did indicate, however, that OPG's own demand supply assessment was not as positive as our own and that concerns about the demand/suppy balance was continuing to be a big hurdle to get over. The IMO is also sticking with its testing/commissioning timeline and is not altering it in light of the announcement on Monday. `
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