The Cost of Natural Gas [was Re: The Cost of California Liberalism]

[Mac Norton]

On Mon, 18 Dec 2000 auto58194 at hushmail.com wrote:
> 
> Huh?  Let's make this simple.  How is California's lack of power plants 
> causing natural gas prices to rise?  Plants that don't exist don't use gas 
> and don't contribute to shortages. 

What the fella said was the lack of power plants indicates a lack of
long-term, fixed price gas contracts, which he assumes, without evidence,
would be inplace had said power plants been built.  it's not an unsafe
assumption, btw, but can't be proved. 

> 
> California's importing power from elsewhere, so why didn't these other generators 
> commit to natural gas suppliers?  
> 

Perhaps because they don't burn gas at their stations. Duh.


> Hint: transmission losses aren't a recent discovery.   

No shit. That's why line loss is taken into account in prices.  
So, er, what?

> 
> Either you're confused or you're trying to use the cold winter as an excuse 
> to create a strawman for your anti-Californian views.  
> 
There are other possibilities. I certainly don't see any strawmwn here,
anti-Cal or otherwise.



> Tim, Jim and Bill have already given good responses to the economic side 
> of things, so I won't comment further in that vein.
> 

What those guys know about economics you can put into a byte. Get
real or read some econ. 
MacN