The ENSTAR Truth

True Story

So now comes Enstar Natural Gas before the Board of Buffones in efforts to try and convince that it is the consumers who should shoulder the burden of an accounting system that is suspicious. Yes, suspicious. I was a Senior Gas Pipeline Controller for Enstar from 1999 through the end of 2003. Back in 2002, some creative book cooking manipulation started to show the ugly side of things upon a business entity that for many years had remained a model business here in Anchorage. I don’t know if it had anything to do with Ben Stevens being appointed the board of directors the parent company of Enstar - SEMCO Energy - but things started to go downhill fast and I lost my job when I refused to be part of the creative accounting gang - as I knew somewhere along the way it would be the consumer that went screwed. Plus, isn’t there a crime against this sort of manipulation if the consumers get taken for a ride? Now I refer to the Board of Buffones - a.k.a. Regulatory Commission - as they were made well aware of what was going on inside Enstar’s Gas Control and Bookkeeping Department. I filed a complaint that never amounted to anything! Now it is the Gas Control that receives on a daily basis all the gas use throughout the system, monitors those volumes for accuracy and consistency and generates reports for billing purposes. If indeed a wrong multiplier was being used which allowed Enstar to over-bill Uncle Sam for gas use at the Ft. Richarson laundry, it is suspicious also, as something should have “Red Flagged” the inaccuracy. Why the Buffones have not taken the liberty to investigate Enstar inside and out is way beyond reality. Back in the early part of 2002, the creative accounting was used to apply gas transportation and delivery profits to an independent gas supplier who had not yet a pipeline in the ditch. This Texas based outfit had not even a gas well that was producing gas, but the company demonstrated a profit, by what the Gas Control creative manipulations produced on paper, and somebody up high was telling the Gas Control workers to make these adjustments. When I placed an “administrative” password lock on the spreadsheet used to manipulate the checks and balances of the system, after correcting months of manipulations wherein somebody was getting screwed over, I was considered “unfit for duty” and placed on administrative leaved until I subjected myself to a “Fit for Duty” examination, basically a psychiatric evaluation. I passed with flying colors because telling the truth is not cause for concern. But the Enstar management was bent on keeping me away from the jobsite – due the fact that I was witness to the book cooking – and did not want me back on the job, especially after I learned that the DOT Operator Qualifier Test, a required test for those individuals that operate a high-pressure pipeline, a test that I was responsible for administering, was all taken care of because the management decided it was best that those required to take the test should be provided the answers during the testing. This is what happens when somebody is placed an “paid leave”! And why provide the answers? Because Enstar was no longer employing experienced gas controllers to run the pipeline and measurement end of the business but accountants that saw too it that the entire system would balance out no matter what went on. Take a little here, leave a little there, it happened on my watch and I said NO. It just doesn’t work that way, this magical balancing act. In fact, the Trans-Alaska-Pipeline which employs the brightest measurement specialist along with the Best Available Technology to measure stuff, it has a problem balancing things to perfection, as there exits just too many variables. And before Enstar decided that I was bad for business and allowed one more chance to conform, I was confronted by an investigator with the DOT Office of Pipeline Safety still having a hard time believing that Enstar has never reported a situation wherein the pipeline was over-pressurized, due lack of experienced operators. See, Enstar management told this fib during a DOT audit. I proved the management wrong and produced the goods, which showed without a shadow of doubt that Enstar has a problem telling the truth and management was trying to pull the wool over the Federal regulators. Enstar was fined for this, but since the book cooking is not a safety issue, it went on un-noticed, until now I believe. To get to the bottom of this, the Buffones need to have an extensive audit of Enstar, but they will most likely find that there was indeed book cooking to the detriment of the consumers and then they will be swamped with work, to undo what has occurred over the years, and that is just to much work for a commission that oversees nothing that matters those they are supposed to protect, us consumers. True story!