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On April 16, FERC’s Office of Enforcement released its “2008 State of the Markets Report” on natural gas and electric market performance during the previous year. Generally, average electricity and natural gas prices in 2008 were substantially greater than prices in 2007 in almost every region of the United States.

On April 16, 2009, President Barack Obama and President Felipe Calderon announced that the U.S. and Mexico would strengthen cooperation to achieve a low carbon future and promote clean energy resources by establishing the U.S.-Mexico Bilateral Framework on Clean Energy and Climate Change (“Framework”). Both Presidents agreed that the two nations need to work together to obtain the common goal of addressing global warming.

EPA announced today that it proposes to make a finding that greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions endanger the public health and welfare. If, as widely expected, EPA finalizes that finding later this year, EPA will become legally obligated to regulate GHGs from a variety of stationary and mobile sources under the existing federal Clean Air Act (“CAA”).

On April 8, 2009, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”) released a statement stating that although they are not aware of any known cyber attacks on the electric grid, cyber security is an area of concern for the organization. On the same day, the Wall Street Journal published an article finding breaches in the United States power grid by spies from China, Russia, and other countries.

On April 2, 2009, Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) introduced an energy bill (S. 807) that would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC” or “Commission”) transmission siting authority, provide nuclear power incentives, expand offshore drilling and use oil and gas revenues to fund renewable energy and efficiency.

On April 2, 2009, FERC denied the two principle allegations in a complaint by PJM Interconnection, LLC (“PJM”) against a member company, Power Edge LLC (“Power Edge”) and several of its affiliates (collectively, “Tower Companies”), claiming Tower Companies manipulated PJM’s financial transmission rights (“FTR”) when Power Edge defaulted in December 2007.