[ Report Home | Previous Page | Next Page ] Texas PACs 2000 Election Cycle Energy & Natural Resources: $5,580,699

Seventy Energy & Natural Resources PACs spent $5.6 million, up 7 percent from what this sector spent in 1998. Leading this sector are several companies that have been accused of improper profiteering in deregulated electricity markets. California officials have accused Enron, Reliant and Duke of gouging consumers by manipulating that state’s deregulated electricity market.

Back in Texas, nuclear power utilities (Reliant and Texas Utilities) used their clout in the legislature to stop a 2001 bill that would have forced them to refund $5 billion to Texas’ ratepayers. Under Texas’ 1999 electric deregulation law, nuclear utilities were allowed to tap consumers for the so-called “stranded costs” of their nuclear reactors, which were not expected to be competitive in a free market. As it turns out, the spiraling costs of oil and gas have made these reactors competitive after all—eliminating the industry’s stranded costs.⁶