Geir Solberg

Geir Solberg was a real-time power trader at Enron’s Portland West Power Trading desk from April 2001 through early February 2002. He specialized in automated scheduling systems, California ISO hour-ahead market operations, and inter-regional transmission path optimization. Solberg worked as part of the real-time trading team under Bill Williams III and was among the approximately 130 Portland-based traders who transitioned to UBS Warburg Energy when that firm acquired Enron’s North American gas and power trading operations in February 2002.

Solberg’s email archive in the Enron corpus contains 1,139 messages spanning April 7, 2001 to November 30, 2002, with 63 unique senders. His correspondence reveals a technically-focused role centered on managing automated scheduling infrastructure and troubleshooting system failures, with approximately 74% of his incoming messages originating from automated system notifications rather than human correspondents.

Career at Enron

West Power Trading

Solberg worked at Enron’s Portland, Oregon office as part of the West Power Trading operation, which employed approximately 130 traders buying and selling wholesale power from utilities throughout the western United States. The Portland desk was a significant hub for Enron’s western power trading activities, handling real-time scheduling and trading operations across multiple control areas including the California Independent System Operator (CISO), Pacific (PAC), Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), and Sierra Pacific.

His first recorded email in the archive dates to April 7, 2001, announcing the reactivation of a buy-resale strategy with the Northern California Power Agency (NCPA). Whether this represents his start date at Enron or simply the beginning of preserved email records remains unclear from available sources.

Real-Time Trading Team

Solberg was part of a tight-knit real-time trading shift team that operated around the clock to manage power scheduling and trading. His primary correspondents among human colleagues included Bill Williams III, who served as the team’s supervisor, along with fellow traders Pete Davis, Ryan Slinger, Craig Dean, Bert Meyers, John Anderson, and Mark Guzman. The nearly identical message counts across these team members (ranging from 845 to 856 messages each) indicate they worked closely together on coordinated shift schedules, receiving the same automated notifications and participating in the same group communications.

Bill Williams III was Solberg’s most frequent human correspondent with 21 direct messages, followed by Julie Kearney from Human Resources with 13 messages and Tim Belden with 8 messages. Belden served as head of the West Power Trading operation and communicated with Solberg primarily during the UBS Warburg transition period.

Technical Expertise

Automated Scheduling Systems

Solberg’s email corpus reveals extensive expertise in automated power scheduling infrastructure. Analysis of volume-adjusted signature terms shows he ranked first across the entire Enron corpus for technical terms including “crawler” (referring to the Schedule Crawler automated notification system), “dbcaps” (database capabilities), “hourahead” (hour-ahead market operations), “parsing,” and “alias” (scheduling aliases for ISO transactions).

The dominance of these technical terms in his communications indicates a role that combined trading operations with systems monitoring and troubleshooting. The “Schedule Crawler” was an automated system developed by Pete Davis that monitored California ISO scheduling operations and generated failure notifications when discrepancies or problems occurred. Solberg received 845 messages from this automated system, accounting for the majority of his incoming correspondence.

Hour-Ahead Market Operations

Solberg specialized in California ISO hour-ahead market operations, which required managing real-time power schedules with very short lead times. His emails frequently reference “HourAhead Failure” notifications, indicating he was responsible for identifying and resolving scheduling problems before they impacted trading positions. The hour-ahead market required rapid response to system alerts and close coordination with ISO scheduling protocols.

His technical vocabulary included ISO scheduling aliases such as EPMI_CISO_BUNNY, EPMI_CISO_TOBY, EPMI_CISO_MEAD, and EPMI_CISO_SOUTH, which represented different scheduling paths and arrangements through the California ISO system. Understanding these alias configurations was essential for managing complex multi-path transactions across control areas.

Trading System Troubleshooting

Solberg’s emails document ongoing challenges with Enron’s internal trading systems, particularly the CAPS system used for recording and managing trades. In one April 2001 email to colleagues, he wrote: “We got some supplemental bids awarded Friday and Saturday morning and as you know CAPS does not deal very well with sup’s… I HAVE ENTERED THE DEALS IN CAPS BUT THEY ARE NOT IN THERE AS AWARDED AS IT DOES NOT WORK.”

This message illustrates both the technical limitations of Enron’s trading infrastructure and Solberg’s role in working around system constraints to ensure accurate trade recording.

Trading Strategies

PATH15 Congestion Avoidance

One of Solberg’s documented trading strategies involved using the Northern California Power Agency’s transmission rights to avoid congestion charges on PATH15, the major transmission constraint between Northern and Southern California. In his first recorded email from April 7, 2001, he explained the arrangement to colleagues:

“I had a long talk with NCPA today and set up so that we again can do the ZP26/NP15 Buy-Resale on a Realtime basis. We are not doing a profit split this time, we are paying them $25/MW instead. This basically enables us to shift 21MW across PATH15 and not be subject to Congestion as NCPA has Grandfather Rights across the path. This is a sweet strategy when the SP15/NP15 spread is there and PATH15 is congested.”

The email reveals both the mechanics of the strategy and an awareness of competitive dynamics, noting: “There are others who know about this opportunity but are not currently using it (WESCO especially). So by doing only 20MW we do not remind them of NCPA.”

Silverpeak Transmission Path

Solberg also developed transmission paths through less commonly used routes. On April 17, 2001, he documented a new strategy for moving power from Southern to Northern California via the Silverpeak interconnection point with Nevada:

“We have a new strategy taking power from the south to the north… THIS SCHEDULE NEEDS TO BE TAGGED OR SIERRA PACIFIC GETS VERY PISSED OFF, THEY ARE NOT USED TO DOING TOO MUCH REAL TIME. THERE IS A TEMPLATE FOR THIS SCHEDULE SO IT SHOULD NOT BE HARD.”

The email included explicit instructions to keep the path confidential from competitors: “Also do not sell to a marketer (especially POWEREX) without sleeving. We do not want anybody else to know about the path. If Powerex sees this I guarantee that they would try to schedule this and we do not want competition.”

ISO Schedule Management

Solberg’s daily work involved managing California ISO scheduling transactions and responding to curtailments. When the ISO cut scheduled transactions, he needed to understand the technical reasons and communicate them to colleagues. In an April 14, 2001 email, he detailed one such incident:

“The ISO cut the one side of my wheel on HE24 on 4/13. I had a firm export at 4C (EPMI_CISO_BUNNY) of 20 mw for a sale to powerex and a wheel EPMI_CISO_TOBY at PALO going out at Silverpeak. They cut the sale to POWEREX and the following imports… Basically they used both the WHEEL IMPORT/FIRM IMPORT to Fill the WHEEL EXPORT.”

Solberg kept the trading team informed about operational impacts through detailed technical explanations.

Key Correspondents

Solberg’s correspondence patterns reveal a work environment dominated by automated system notifications and close coordination with his immediate trading team.

*Note: These counts represent messages where the individual was included as a recipient, often on group distribution lists.

The most frequent conversation topics in Solberg’s archive were dominated by automated notifications, with “Schedule Crawler: HourAhead Failure” appearing 277 times. Other topics included Williams Energy news broadcasts, trading assistant interview coordination, and real-time schedule planning for shift coverage.

Workplace Culture

Beyond the technical demands of real-time trading, Solberg participated in the social fabric of the Portland trading floor. During the 2001 NHL Stanley Cup playoffs, he organized a hockey pool among colleagues, sending updates such as: “HERE ARE THE PICKS FOR ROUND 2: Tom: Pittsburgh, Guzman: Pittsburgh, Steve: Pittsburgh, Broker: Pittsburgh, Holden: Buffalo. It could be over after this round!”

He also took on investigative tasks beyond immediate trading duties. In May 2001, he documented research into weather data services, noting: “For Earth_Sat and Weather Bank: - What are the business arrangements. How much $$$. How is it allocated. - Get historical Billing. - Go directly into Database.” Weather data was essential for power trading forecasting, and his involvement suggests responsibility for evaluating data service costs and database integration.

UBS Warburg Transition

Acquisition Announcement

In January 2002, UBS Warburg announced its acquisition of Enron’s North American gas and power trading operations. On January 11, 2002, Tim Belden sent an email to the trading floor announcing “UBS Wins,” confirming that UBS had been selected to acquire the trading operation. This announcement triggered an intensive transition period that dominated Solberg’s email activity for the following month.

Solberg’s email volume spiked during this period, from a typical range of 6-30 emails per month throughout 2001 to 788 emails in January 2002 alone, representing 69% of his entire archived corpus. This spike reflected both increased automated notifications during system transitions and a flood of corporate communications regarding the acquisition process.

Transition Process

The transition involved extensive administrative requirements including drug testing, background checks, benefits enrollment, and IT system migrations. Julie Kearney from Human Resources became a frequent correspondent during this period, coordinating paperwork and answering questions about the employment transition.

Emails from this period reference “anticipated Enron/UBS Closing Date of Friday, Feb. 8” and various administrative steps required before employees could officially join UBS Warburg Energy, LLC.

UBS Warburg Energy Launch

UBS Warburg Energy officially launched on February 8, 2002. Solberg was among the Portland traders who transitioned to the new entity, which continued operating the western power trading business. An internal celebration email welcomed employees: “Welcome to UBS Warburg Energy, LLC.”

Solberg’s email activity continued through February 2002 with 195 messages, primarily related to finalizing the transition and establishing operations under the new ownership structure.

Email Activity

Solberg’s email volume patterns reveal the rhythm of his work and the impact of the UBS transition.

The dramatic January 2002 spike correlates precisely with the UBS Warburg acquisition timeline. Analysis of these emails shows they were predominantly automated system notifications (Schedule Crawler failures increased during the transition period), UBS transition administrative communications, and company-wide announcements rather than increased trading activity.

Legal Status

Geir Solberg does not appear in Department of Justice prosecution records, SEC enforcement actions, or Federal Energy Regulatory Commission investigation documents related to Enron’s California energy crisis market manipulation schemes. His email archive dates primarily from April 2001 onward, after the peak period of the California energy crisis (2000 to early 2001), and contains no evidence of involvement in the trading strategies later prosecuted by federal authorities.

His documented trading strategies, while focused on exploiting transmission path advantages and avoiding congestion charges, represent standard arbitrage techniques in wholesale power markets rather than the market manipulation schemes that resulted in criminal prosecutions of other Enron traders.

See Also

• Bill Williams III — Real-time trading supervisor at Portland desk
• Tim Belden — Head of West Power Trading
• Trading Operations — Enron’s Portland trading operation
• California Energy Crisis — Background on western power market conditions
• UBS Warburg Acquisition — Sale of Enron’s trading operations

References

This article draws on Geir Solberg’s email archive in the Enron corpus, containing 1,139 messages from April 7, 2001 to November 30, 2002. Signature term analysis was performed using volume-adjusted TF-IDF scoring against the complete Enron email corpus of 1.23 million messages.

Secondary sources consulted include the Seattle Times archive (“Traders’ fortunes rose, fell with Enron power in West,” February 11, 2002), NPR coverage of Enron investigations, and SourceWatch documentation on Portland General Electric. No DOJ, SEC, or major news sources mention Geir Solberg by name, consistent with his role as an operational trader rather than senior executive.