Evidence receipt / belief
Published · transcript-backedDavid 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.”
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.