from: GRANTS PASS COURIER, Friday, July 23, 1999 (no link available)

SODA SPRINGS, Idaho -- Solutia, Inc., whose phosphorus plant is PacifiCorp's largest point of sale, opposes the current bid by glasgow-based ScottishPower to acquire the power utility. Solutia's announcement Thursday places the specialty chemicals company in alliance with farmers, irrigators, and residential customers who already have expressed opposition to the proposed buyout. "Our concern comes down to one word -- efficiency", said Trent Clark, Solutia public affairs director. "We have given ScottishPower months to explain how a company that describes itself as a 'former bloated and bureaucratic British government-owned utility' can step in and improve efficiency halfway around the world." Solutia's Soda Springs area plant is the single largest electrical customer for PacifiCorp, owner of Utah Power & Light. He said that even during several days of testimony about the proposed bid last week before the Idaho Public Utilities Commission, ScottishPower still had not sufficiently made its case. "Solutia understands international investment," Clark said. "We do not oppose this buyout on the basis of ScottishPower's foreign ownership.

This is not an encouraging situation for the persons in the ten NW states served by PacifiCorp. Major transitions such as this are typically rife with layoffs, uncertainty, confusion, changes in policy and practice, etc. Coming just before the Y2K transition, it is especially worrisome.

If there are major worldwide electric utility disruptions due to y2k, is it reasonable to expect that ScottishPower would concentrate its remedial efforts in the rural, sparsely-settled Pacific NW of the USA...or would it first apply its resources to its constitutents in the British Isles?

Any bets?

-- Anonymous, August 03, 1999

Answers

Sorry....Grants Pass is in SW Oregon. Norm

-- Anonymous, August 03, 1999