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Evidence receipt / belief

Published · transcript-backed

David Rosenthal: belief

29 Nov 2022 Acquired Enron

“I think what they would do as part of it, too, is call up generation plants where they had relationships, and encourage them to shut down for maintenance at specific points in time when they knew it would cause blackouts and spike the price.”

— David Rosenthal

Source trail

Everything needed to verify it.

Speaker
David Rosenthal
Attribution
Verified speaker
Claim type
belief
Recorded
29 Nov 2022
Publisher
Acquired
Episode
Enron

Transcript context

…No, this was where they would export it out of the state, and they had control over the transmission line, so they could do that. Then when California realized, oh, crap, we need energy, then they would have a contract in place, where Enron would get paid to bring it back in at much, much higher prices, which the industry will start calling this megawatt laundering, because that's really what it was. I think what they would do as part of it, too, is call up generation plants where they had relationships, and encourage them to shut down for maintenance at specific points in time when they knew it would cause blackouts and spike the price. It's exactly what it did. I am confident that people died from this. This is one of those things, where if you're randomly depriving huge swaths of California from power—hospitals, schools, people's homes—it's not fun in games. It is profiting from terrible harmful activities to people.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.

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