Washington, DC --Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-Petaluma) today joined members of the California Democratic Delegation to urge a full investigation of the business and pricing practices of the Enron Corporation in California and the West during 2000 and 2001. Rep. Woolsey was one of 24 members of the California Delegation that made a similar request to the House Energy and Commerce Committee earlier this year, but the group as yet to receive a reply to that urgent request.

“Enron ripped off millions of Californians,” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey. “We must have a proper investigation of how Enron was able to take advantage of the deregulated energy market in California, so we can be sure this never happens again.”

According to the letter Rep. Woolsey and her colleagues sent to Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-LA), Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, “Recently produced internal memoranda show that Enron may have systematically gamed the energy trading system, using techniques that added to electricity costs and congestion on transmission lines. The documents also describe falsified power-delivery schedules, the submission of false information to the state, and the effective increasing of costs to all market participants by knowingly increasing the congestion costs.

“The Committee's investigation of Enron has unfortunately totally failed to look into the role the company played in causing and profiting from the Western energy crisis. While the Committee has found time to look into the practices of Enron's auditors and Wall Street investment banks, it has failed to examine the extent to which Enron -- or, for that matter, other power marketers -- manipulated energy markets.”

Representative Woolsey was joined on the letter by Reps. Eshoo, Waxman, Capps, Harman, Thompson, George Miller, Pelosi, Lee, Honda, Lofgren, Farr, Dooley, Sherman, Berman, Schiff, Becerra, Watson, Roybal-Allard, Napolitano, Waters, Harman, Millender-McDonald, Sanchez, and Susan Davis.

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