Remember back in 2000 when California was suffering electricty shortages, and was operating under rolling brown outs? Remember how years later it came to light that Enron was manipulating the market? How Enron had convince Electrical Generating plants to pull generators for "maintenance" or just not operate at full capacity?

Remember the people who died because of these tactics?

Remember the Enron E-mails mocking the people who were suffering, and bragging about how much Enron could control the markets?

When Enron went busted, who do you think their ex-employees went to work for?

Remember the Energy policy meeting Dick Cheney had back in 2000? The one that the names of the attendees is still a state secret? Still, it is widely known Ken Lay, head of Enron was in attendance.

Anyone see any similarities between California's 2000 energy crisis and the one the USA has suffered under since 2001?

Perhaps this article will provide enlightenment:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN0325640920080703?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=10174&sp=true

Excerpt:

The 1.6 million barrels a day in record petroleum exports represented 9 percent of total U.S. refining capacity of 17.6 million barrels a day.

However, with refiners operating at 85 percent of capacity during the January-April period, the shipments represented a much a larger share of total U.S. oil products produced.

The exports were also equal to half the 3.2 million barrels of gasoline, diesel fuel and other petroleum products the United States imported each day over the 4-month period.

The biggest share of U.S. oil products exported went to Mexico, Canada, Chile, Singapore and Brazil.

U.S. consumers are paying record prices for gasoline and diesel fuel, which the Bush administration blames in part on tight supplies.

While the administration argues that more supplies would help to bring down prices, U.S exports of diesel fuel in April averaged 387,000 barrels per day, up almost seven-fold from 59,000 barrels a day in the same month a year earlier.

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Sounds like California all over again.