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Southwest Power Pool Board Approves New Process to Accelerate High Impact Large Load Connections

LCG, September 16, 2025--Southwest Power Pool’s (SPP) Board of Directors today announced that the Board approved a process to facilitate the connection of large users of electricity to the power grid while continuing to support energy needs for the entire region. SPP's new process is designed to incorporate transmission service, generation, load interconnection and other relevant reliability studies into a single framework that enables timely, informed decision-making and action.

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Longroad Energy Announces Financial Close of 1000 Mile Solar Project in Texas

LCG, September 15, 2025--Longroad Energy announced today the financial close of 1000 Mile Solar, its 300 MWac (400 MWdc) solar project in Yoakum County, Texas. Longroad Energy finalized a long-term offtake agreement with Meta late last year in the form of an Environmental Attributes Purchase Agreement, which includes a financial settlement arrangement for the entire energy output of 1000 Mile Solar.

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Industry News

California Wants El Paso to Pay for Market Abuse

LCG, Oct. 17, 2001--The president of the California Public Utilities Commission yesterday asked federal regulators to ignore the decision of its top administrative law judge who ruled last week that El Paso Corp. and its affiliates did not conspire to drive up natural gas prices in the state.

Loretta Lynch, appointed by California Gov. Gray Davis to head the CPUC, told lawmakers in Washington that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should "provide a remedy for past illegal actions and set a clear standard for the future." The remedy should be in the form of cash.

Administrative Law Judge Curtis Wagner did not find evidence of manipulation. "While El Paso Pipeline and El Paso Merchant had the ability to exercise market power, there was not a clear showing that they had in fact done so," he said in his October 9 ruling.

But Wagner said transcripts of telephone conversations in February of last year showed clear violation of FERC standards of conduct, which say a pipeline operator must share natural gas transmission information with all shippers and not just its own marketing affiliates.

The standards also require that a pipeline company and its marketing affiliate must maintain "arm's length" separation.

"These telephone transcripts demonstrate blatant collusion on the part of El Paso Merchant and Mojave-El Paso Pipeline to keep secret a discount for service on the downstream Mojave system until the open season ended, giving El Paso Merchant an advantage in making its bid for the total 1,220 million cubic feet per day," Wagner wrote.

The CPUC, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., and Southern California Edison Co., claimed El Paso withheld capacity on its pipelines into the state from March through November of last year. They asserted that the action inflated prices, costing the state $3.7 billion more than would have otherwise been paid for gas.

Judge Wagner's decision did not convince Lynch. "This is a textbook case of market power exercised to increase prices unlawfully," Lynch told a U.S. House reform subcommittee hearing on California's natural gas industry.

She added that if FERC fails to find that El Paso exercised market power "there isn't a market power case out there anywhere."

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