Your understanding was correct.  In light of recent changes in the California 
regulatory environment (eg the recent rate order) I don't think it makes 
sense for us to distribute the document at this time, so you can ignore the 
request.  Thanks



	Peter Augustini <paugustini@CERA.com>
	03/29/2001 06:18 PM
		 
		 To: "'skean@enron.com'" <skean@enron.com>
		 cc: David Gibbons <dgibbons@CERA.com>
		 Subject: request to CERA

Steve: 
Thanks for your note, sorry I missed you.  From your message I think there 
may be some miscommunication between your PR guys and us.  We understood that 
your PR people wanted to reprint the Op-ed and redistribute it to 
as-yet-undetermined people, along with various Enron material.  They also 
wanted to post it on Enron's public web site.
But your message seemed to indicate you just want to post the op-ed on your 
intranet -  for educational use only for your internal folks.  If this is 
correct, we would have no problem with it. In fact, we have posted the op-ed 
on the CERA web page - which is theoretically available to every Enron 
employee for internal use only.  If you want you could just post a link to 
the CERA web site so your people could get direct access to all our research 
on the topic.
If I misunderstood you, and you do want to redistribute the piece to 
third-parties -- that is a much bigger issue because it involves our 
intellectual property and  branding issues.  Obviously, we would need to talk 
some more about this.  I hope this helps.
On a somewhat-related note, we are also getting sucked more and more into the 
California vortex, and being asked to help in areas that are not our 
traditional business, such as expert witness testimony and policy issues.  
While we are not afraid to take a point of view (as you know!) we must 
maintain a neutral and independent posture.  This is sometimes a difficult 
path to navigate, but we are exploring two areas that may also interest Enron:
1. We have examined Joskow and FERC's analysis on the price gouging issue and 
we believe there are several major flaws in their methodologies.  We are 
considering how best to broadcast our assessment, without impinging on our 
core business, or becoming an expert witness.  We think a workshop, similar 
to the Monday event at CERAWeek could work, where we would present our 
findings and issue a report.
2. We are also looking into the economic impact of power outages in the West 
- especially linked to the overall fragile state of the US economy.  This 
would be a collaborative effort with a major economic forecasting firm or 
university.  Again the reults would go to our clients, but could be released 
to a wider audience, and a workshop might help highlight the release.
Please let us know if either topic would be of interest to Enron.  We would 
need to raise funding from various clients to help underwrite the effort , 
but the work would be CERA's independent research and we would stand fully 
behind it.
Hope all is well. ...Peter 
.