California Gov. Gavin Newsom has called on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to immediately investigate the recent spike in natural gas prices in the state and establish whether they may be linked to market manipulation or anti-competitive behavior, among other things.
In a Feb. 6th letter (pdf) to Willie Phillips, the chair of the FERC, the federal agency responsible for regulating wholesale natural gas, the Democratic governor requested that the agency turn its “immediate attention to the matter of escalating wholesale natural gas prices impacting customers in California and other western states.”
The governor requested that the agency “immediately focus its investigatory resources on assessing whether market manipulation, anticompetitive behavior, or other anomalous activities are driving these ongoing elevated prices in the western gas markets.”…