Tapes Reveal Enron's Power Plant Rigging

Enron Corp. traders conspired to shut down a healthy power plant as blackouts rolled across California in early 2001, according to documents released Thursday.

In the brash language that has become a familiar coda to the electricity crunch, Enron traders and others were captured discussing in e-mail messages and telephone conversations how they could profit from the state's problems.

In one transcript released Thursday, an Enron trader identified only as Bill called it "a good plan" to shut down a small Las Vegas power plant on Jan. 17, 2001, under the guise of "checkin' a switch on the steam turbine." Enron employees also suggested that their plans to exploit Western energy markets predated the meltdown of 2000 and 2001, which brought record electricity prices and emergency blackouts.

The transcripts were among some 100,000 pages of testimony recently submitted to federal regulators by the Snohomish County Public Utility District, a Seattle-area utility that is in a legal battle with Enron.

The Washington utility was allowed by federal investigators -- who are looking into the Enron scandal -- to retrieve the e-mails and audiotapes from a warehouse owned by Enron. The utility was the source of an earlier set of Enron tapes that proved embarrassing to the Houston energy company, which in December 2001 filed for bankruptcy protection.

That set of tapes, in which traders chanted "burn baby burn" and gloated about inflating costs for "Grandma Millie" in California, inflamed the simmering controversy.

Although the legal significance of the new evidence wasn't immediately clear, it added new dimensions to the picture of Enron as a cynical, manipulative enterprise and brought fresh condemnation from others in the energy business.

"The transcripts that I've got in my hands are extremely disturbing," said Stephanie McCorkle, a spokeswoman for the California Independent System Operator, which runs the electricity transmission grid for much of the state. "It's extremely upsetting to the ISO to look at conversations of this type."

She described as "abhorrent" any intentional plan to take a unit out of service in a bid to disrupt the system.

According to the newly released transcript, Enron traders on Jan. 16, 2001, hatched a plan to take an Enron-controlled power plant in Las Vegas off-line the following day. In a phone call, "Bill of Enron" informed "Rich," a Las Vegas power plant employee, that "we want you guys to get a little creative