Illinois nominally opened its electricity generation to competition for all consumers as of May 2002. Have we seen much entry? Heard much consumer education? Seen any advertising from competitors? No. It’s been staggeringly disappointing. But that may change soon. Peoples Energy, our less-than-impressive natural gas former monopoly utility, has contracted with Hess Microgen to provide …
Read Megan McArdle’s post on Gray Davis’ suggestions for federal economic policy. The comments are also particularly illuminating, including the one that points out that California’s budget deficit is larger than the combined deficit of all of the rest of the states. The comments also have a discussion of the extent of Enron’s culpability in …
According to the Washington Post, the US will join the mediation effort of the Organization of American States to bring a quicker end to the instability in Venezuela.
Gas prices to rise by summer, government says. Gas prices always rise by summer, it’s called seasonal demand variation. But this AP article is more substantive than that (I realize that they are hard-pressed to come up with pithy headlines), discussing how the current supply problems from Venezuela are likely to lead to a higher-than-average …
How cool is this: vampire bat saliva has a clot-busting compound that could lead to new drugs to prevent strokes.
According to the Alliance for Retail Markets, Texas’s restructuring law is working. They measure that success by consumer switching, which at 6.5 percent is high relative to switching experience in other states, and by estimated consumer savings of $6-14/month for those who have switched. I have quibbles with these measures of success, because it does …
New Report Says Electricity Restructuring Is Working In Texas Read More »
Such is the conclusion of a California Independent System Operator report released Monday. This Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) and this LA Times article (subscription required) discuss the report, but interestingly, they have different slants. The LA Times article has the tone of “here’s a list of companies that did what Enron did” and …
CA Electricity Prices Result Of Market Power, Not Gaming? Read More »
Now the Venezuelan opposition is encouraging citizens to stop paying taxes. Again I raise the question: has Chavez abrogated his constitutional responsibilities to his constituents? If so, then you could argue either the Locke argument that citizens have the right to rebel, or the Sidney argument that citizens have the responsibility to rebel. The extent …
Venezuela’s iron and steel industry is in virtual shutdown because of the (natural) gas shortage brought on by the strike. Gas is a by-product of oil production, so it’s been shut down too. It turns out that Venezula is the world’s largest producer of hot briquetted iron, which is an input in the production of …
OPEC is having an emergency meeting Sunday to discuss the extent to which they should raise output. Furthermore, their proposed increase of up to 1.5 million barrels/day is a large increase for them, and drove down crude oil futures prices. Some news reports have argued that this is a dramatic policy shift for OPEC, but …
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