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Vistra to Install New Gas-Fired Units at Permian Basin Power Plant

LCG, September 30, 2025--Vistra Corp. announced yesterday that it will proceed with the next phase of its capital plan to support grid reliability in Texas. In 2024, Vistra identified over $1 billion worth of potential capital additions in generation capacity within the Texas ERCOT market by 2028 if market conditions were supportive. Now, with West Texas' growing power requirements, particularly the state's expanding oil and natural gas industries, Vistra reached a final investment decision and confirms it will build two new advanced natural gas-fired power units on-site at its Permian Basin Power Plant.

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ERCOT Announces New Grid Research, Innovation and Transformation (GRIT) Initiative

LCG, September 24, 2025--Electric Reliability Council of Texas Inc. (ERCOT) yesterday announced its new initiative to increase its efforts to fully use and apply innovation and transformation through industry collaboration to best overcome the challenges and opportunities facing future grid operations. The new Grid Research, Innovation, and Transformation (GRIT) initiative will advance research and prototyping of emerging concepts and solutions to better understand the implications of rapid grid and technology evolution and position ERCOT to lead in the future energy landscape.

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Industry News

Key Enron Unit Lied About Profits, Former Employee Alleges

LCG, Jan. 25, 2002--A former sales director at Enron, Margaret Ceconi, found soon after starting at the company that Enron Energy Services, which made wholesale energy deals with corporations, was making losses on nearly all of its deals, she told Reuters Thursday.

After working at Enron for approximately nine months, Ceconi was laid off in a reorganization in mid-2001. Ceconi then sent an e-mail to then-chairman Ken Lay and Enron's board that laid out her concerns that EES' financial statements showed profitability for every quarter, beginning in the fourth quarter of 1999. Her attorney, Demetrios Anaipakos, said there was "a genuine concern on her part that EES had essentially been playing a shell game, window-dressing its own alleged profits."

According to Ceconi, the losses were masked by other activity in the wholesale energy business units. "This is common knowledge among all the EES employees and is actually joked about. But it should be taken seriously," she said.

A University of San Diego law professor unconnected with Ceconi offered testimony to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee yesterday that reinforced the sense that Enron made large losses, which were covered up by profits in other areas. Frank Partnoy said he believed, based on "written information, e-mail correspondence and telephone interviews," that revenues from the company's derivatives trading business were used to cover up unprofitable activities.

Partnoy said that Enron's profitable use of derivates, financial contracts which are valued based upon prices of commodities or securities, enabled the company to lie to the financial community about its losses from speculation in risky stocks and its failed ventures in retail energy, water and broadband services.

He stated that by expertly inflating its billions of dollars in profits from derivatives, the company intentionally created false accounting statements. The professor said that regulation of derivatives and capital markets were necessitated by the role of "auditors, law firms, banks, securities analysts, independent directors and credit rating agencies" in the company's demise.
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