Ray - it seems highly likely the court will allow FERC to proceed w/ rehearing.  In any case, I doubt an adverse ruling would affect the PNW case as the 7/25 order simply announced the new proceeding.  

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Alvarez, Ray  
Sent:	Thursday, October 25, 2001 5:25 PM
To:	Steffes, James D.; Robertson, Linda; Frank, Robert; Novosel, Sarah
Subject:	Weird procedural situation

OK, here are the facts as I understand them:  The CPUC filed petitions for review of the FERC's various refund orders in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. There is an unresolved jurisdictional issue that the petitions filed in the Ninth Circuit are incurably premature because they sought review of orders for which the petitioner was also requesting rehearing.  The current status of the CPUC's Ninth Circuit petitions is that the court has not yet dismissed the petitions as premature and FERC must file the record in the Ninth tomorrow, October 26.  At that point, under Section 313 of the Federal Power Act, the jurisdiction of the court of appeals becomes exclusive, and  FERC will not be able to modify the orders under review except by leave of the court.  FERC has filed, and the CPUC is supporting, a motion for an order permitting FERC to keep jurisdiction over its orders so that it can act on the pending rehearing requests.  By all rights, the court should go along with this, but it's gone on this long.  We are not adversely impacted.  Arguably if FERC loses jurisdiction, the PNW and CA refund cases should come to a complete stop, although this is an unlikely scenario.  I will keep you posted of new developments.  Ray