Consumer advocates with the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) said that they would strongly oppose a merger of two of the nation’s largest unregulated power companies.
According to a Wall Street Journal alert “Dynegy is considering injecting about $2 billion into Enron in a transaction that may lead to a full-blown merger between the two companies, people familiar with the matter said.”
The two companies have been major players in the California deregulation debacle, both responsible for selling wildly overpriced electricity into the dysfunctional California market, according to FTCR. Enron, which had been the poster child for deregulation advocates, has lost some of its luster recently in the wake of an SEC investigation and a $1.2 billion reduction in its equity base.
“Electricity deregulation has been an unmitigated disaster for consumers, run by a bunch of Houston-based bad boys for whom deregulation is the weapon and consumer gouging is the booty,” said consumer advocate Doug Heller with the California-based FTCR. “The only thing worse than the current energy cartel would be the more tightly controlled cartel to come out of an Enron–Dynegy merger. We will oppose this merger and urge state and federal authorities to oppose it as well.”
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