RE: RCR for MD gas comments

Understand.

When you speak of the gas desk, are you talking to Scott Neal and Frank Vickers or Don Black?? We should make sure that both groups recognize our message.

Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: Kingerski, Harry
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 2:44 PM
To: Steffes, James D.; Shapiro, Richard
Cc: Migden, Janine; Binns, Darran
Subject: RCR for MD gas comments

Follow-up on the RCR for MD gas comments discussed last Monday -

The Commission has asked for legal briefs on whether they have the authority to order or authorize a utility to stop providing sales service. Enron had earlier filed a one paragraph statement (as part of a gas roundtable) that said utilities should obtain default service supply from competitive suppliers.

At this point, Janine and I agreed we should:
1) file reply comments, not initial comments
2) in reply comments, agree with parties that say the Commission does have the authority (such parties will most likely include BGE and others), but caution that if the Commission were to allow or cause this to happen, they should be careful to structure default supply in a way that does not force marketers to take on unwanted roles, generally does not cause market chaos, and does not simply lock up the total market for a utility affiliate.

(The Commission's real motivation here may be to keep BGE in the role of default supplier. For now, our gas desk also would like to see them stay in that role. The likely winner of an eventual bidding process is BGE Home or WGL Energy Services, and they already dominate the competitive market.)

The RCR amount should stay at $2k.