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Thanks Eugene, amazing stuff.
The story is also on the San Francisco Chronicle
website, for those of us who don't have subs and are unable to buy the WSJ at
the local newsagent:
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 8:55
AM
Subject: [PEN-L] The Indonesia
story
I probably should say something about the WSJ story I touted
this morning.
Edison Mission Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of what
is now Edison International, the giant southern California utility, along with
GE and others, won the right to build a coal plant at Paiton in
Indonesia.
Perhaps they were successful in the bidding because they
gave, for no money down, 15% of the ownership to a Suharto relative -- 15% of
a billion dollar plant. That share would be paid for out of the profits
once the plant was producing.
Or perhaps they were successful because
the contract to supply coal for the plant went to a Suharto
relative.
Who can guess?
Part of the plant was financed by OPIC,
the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. So, you US citizens, you
helped get this thing built!
The price for the output -- the price per
kWh -- was very high. It would have been high in the USA, but in
Indonesia, where some of the customers work for sweatshop wages, and some work
for less than that, the price was outrageous. And that was before
the Asian financial crisis.
Never mind, Warren Christopher fixed
things. Warren, coincidentally (?) was US secretary of State under
Clinton and a member of Edison's Board of directors before the his service at
the State department and again after he stopped being a public
servant.
Everytime I think of the Paiton deal I think of the World
Trade Center.
John Bryson, the CEO of Edison International, was
a founder of NRDC.
Gene Coyle
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