110 



Mr. Smith of Oregon. For instance, we've got some great poten- 

 tial in this State. One of them is at Newberg Crater, which you're 

 famihar with. The other one is the Alvord Desert. How do they 

 compare with the wind? You may not know. I understand they're 

 still developing. 



Ms. HiCKEY. The geothermal projects actually are in the competi- 

 tive range here. They're in the 40-45 mill range. 



Mr. Smith of Oregon. That's below wind. 



Ms. HiCKEY. It's a little bit below wind, yes. 



Mr. Smith of Oregon. Then you're prioritizing in steps. If hydro 

 is not available, the next most cost-effective step, which we won't 

 take, is what source? 



Ms. HiCKEY. Let me try describing this another way. The chart 

 here is showing actual purchases. It's also showing geothermal and 

 wind that are coming from a specific pilot project. What we see oc- 

 curring is that in terms of megawatts, by far the largest number 

 of megawatts we get are from gas-fired projects, either cogenera- 

 tion or combustion turbines. 



They are generally the least cost and the highest number of 

 megawatts. This is not unusual. If you talk to any electric utiUty 

 in the country, thej^re probably going to tell you that. So that 

 makes us nervous about relying too much on gas. 



Mr. Smith of Oregon. You're beginning to make me nervous 

 about getting to the point. Go ahead. 



Ms. HiCKEY. So we see geothermal and wind as technologies that 

 we really need to look to for the future. We're not going to have 

 that much more hydro. The biomass is quite limited. So when 

 you're talking in the range of 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 megawatts, we 

 feel we can rely on gas, but then we need a bridge to some new 

 technologies, and those look like geothermal and wind. 



Mr. Smith of Oregon. Relying on gas, I know we have a little 

 production miss, but I suppose most of that gas is Canadian gas. 

 Is that right? 



Ms. HiCKEY. Yes, most of it is. 



Mr. Smith of Oregon. The lion's share of it is, yes. In your prior- 

 ity discussion, do you take into consideration the development of 

 resources in the United States versus the dependency for a foreign 

 source of energy? 



Mr. Hardy. No, we did not. We did not use that as a develop- 

 ment criterion in the evaluation. 



Mr. Smith of Oregon. If the costs were the same, I would as- 

 sume both meeting the test of cost-effective, would you lean to- 

 wards development of this country's resources versus the use of Ca- 

 nadian gas? 



Mr. Hardy. I'd say that would probably be one of many factors, 

 the subjective factors. If we had the cost roughly equivalent, having 

 internalized all the other costs that you look at in making subjec- 

 tive evaluations, just like we look at the capability of the resource 

 developer and other kinds of factors right now that we can't put a 

 price tag on. But we do try to evaluate those in kind of a pass-fail 

 sense when we're making a resource evaluation, and that would be 

 another factor. 



Mr. Smith of Oregon. This didn't just first occur to you when I 

 asked you, did it? 



