Steven Harris

Steven Harris served as Vice President of the Transwestern Commercial Group at Transwestern Pipeline Company, a major Enron subsidiary operating a 1.7 Bcf/d natural gas pipeline system from the San Juan, Permian, and Anadarko basins in Texas and New Mexico to California. In this role he managed commercial operations, oversaw regulatory proceedings before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), and directed the $93 million Red Rock Expansion project to increase pipeline capacity serving California’s growing gas-fired power generation market. External correspondence from Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) also addressed him as Regional Vice President.

Harris’s email archive in the Enron corpus contains 611 messages from 242 unique correspondents, spanning February 9, 2000 to November 30, 2002. The archive is heavily concentrated in the final three months of Enron’s existence: 583 of 611 emails (95%) fall within October through December 2001, coinciding with Enron’s financial collapse, a major FERC victory for Transwestern, and the pipeline’s exclusion from Enron’s bankruptcy filing.

Role and Responsibilities

Harris led the Transwestern Commercial Group within Enron Transportation Services (ETS), the division headed by Stanley Horton. His work spanned commercial operations, regulatory advocacy, expansion project management, and industry intelligence gathering. He reported within Horton’s organization and coordinated regularly with Drew Fossum, Vice President and General Counsel of ETS, on legal and regulatory matters.

The Transwestern Pipeline system served California markets as one of the major interstate pipelines delivering out-of-state natural gas, primarily to southern California through its connection with Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) at the Needles delivery point. Managing commercial relationships with California utilities and shippers during a period of volatile energy markets and regulatory restructuring placed Harris at the center of consequential industry proceedings.

On October 23, 2001, Harris was featured in an internal eSpeak webcast session where employees could ask questions about Transwestern’s operations. The announcement described the session as an opportunity to “discuss Transwestern, Enron’s Texas to California pipeline, in an ‘open mike’ session,” reflecting the pipeline’s significance within Enron’s broader portfolio.

Red Rock Expansion Project

The Red Rock Expansion was a $93 million project to add 150,000 MMBtu/d of capacity to Transwestern’s mainline serving California through compressor upgrades at four stations along the system. The project required 41,500 horsepower of new compression but no new pipeline construction, making it a capacity enhancement of existing infrastructure to meet growing demand from California gas-fired power generation.

Construction and Oversight

By the time Harris’s email corpus becomes dense in October 2001, the Red Rock project was already FERC-approved and in active construction. Tree clearing commenced at Station 2 on October 11, 2001, with off-site fabrication of tie-in assemblies underway simultaneously. Harris received weekly construction reports tracking progress across the four compressor station locations.

Not all stations progressed at the same pace. In November 2001, regulatory counsel Bill Rapp circulated a draft request to FERC for a one-year extension on the Station 4 component of the project. Rapp explained the reason in a November 16, 2001 email to Harris: “My understanding is that we need to request a one year extension as to Station 4 (but not as to the other three compressor stations included in the Red Rock expansion) due to the fact that we haven’t fully contracted for all of the capacity authorized by FERC.” Harris reviewed the filing and approved it with a brief “Looks fine to me” on November 19, indicating his role as the commercial decision-maker on project-level regulatory filings.

Regulatory Proceedings

Harris’s commercial group managed Transwestern’s participation in multiple concurrent regulatory proceedings at both the federal and state level. These proceedings addressed pipeline tariff compliance, California gas market restructuring, and competitive disputes with interconnecting utilities.

SoCalGas FERC Complaint

On September 28, 2001, Transwestern filed a formal complaint against Southern California Gas Company at FERC (Docket No. RP01-620-000), alleging that SoCalGas’s refusal to pay the tariff commodity rate constituted a violation of Transwestern’s tariff and the 1995 Global Settlement between the two companies. SoCalGas filed its answer on October 18, 2001. An internal memo from regulatory counsel Greg Porter, circulated to Harris on October 22, 2001, summarized the dispute and outlined Transwestern’s legal position.

This complaint represented a significant commercial dispute. The 1995 Global Settlement had established the contractual framework governing payments between the two pipeline systems, and SoCalGas’s alleged non-compliance threatened Transwestern’s revenue from California deliveries.

CPUC Gas Industry Restructuring

Harris tracked California’s Gas Industry Restructuring proceeding (Docket I99-07-003), a CPUC effort to restructure how gas utilities like SoCalGas managed interstate pipeline contracts and capacity. On October 11, 2001, Commissioner Bilas of the CPUC issued a Revised Proposed Decision adopting a Comprehensive Settlement that Transwestern had supported. Glen Hass, who handled regulatory affairs, reported to Harris on October 18 that Transwestern had filed comments “supporting the PD with the exception of the modification by the PD to place a price cap on the secondary market.”

In December 2001, the CPUC adopted Decision 01-12-018, finalizing the Gas Industry Restructuring framework. The decision addressed stranded costs from interstate pipeline contracts including Transwestern’s agreements, making it a direct commercial concern for Harris’s group.

FERC Victory: October 24, 2001

On October 24, 2001, a FERC Administrative Law Judge issued a decision in Transwestern’s favor in a separate proceeding. The timing could hardly have been more pointed: Enron had disclosed a $544 million third-quarter loss just eight days earlier, and the company’s stock was in freefall. Drew Fossum sent a congratulatory email to the legal team that day, singling out Harris by name among the key contributors.

Stanley Horton, President of Enron Pipelines, added his own congratulations.

The exchange captures the dual reality of Transwestern operations in late 2001: the pipeline business was winning regulatory battles and executing expansion projects even as the parent company was disintegrating.

Industry Engagement: CERA Membership

Harris’s signature terms in the email corpus reveal an unusually high ownership of CERA-related vocabulary, with “cera” (10.37 ownership score) and “cambridge” (10.36) ranking among his most distinctive terms across the entire Enron corpus. He maintained active memberships in multiple Cambridge Energy Research Associates advisory services, including the Distributed Energy Advisory Service.

Through these memberships, Harris received regular industry briefings on natural gas market fundamentals, winter gas supply outlooks, heating oil market conditions, energy security policy, and distributed energy trends. He forwarded selected CERA content to Transwestern staff, with Lorna Brennan managing CERA registration and access for the team. This intelligence-gathering function positioned Harris to anticipate market shifts affecting Transwestern’s commercial strategy and California delivery commitments.

On October 23, 2001, CERA addressed Harris as “Mr. Steve Harris, Regional Vice President, Transwestern Pipeline Company” in a survey request for its Distributed Energy Advisory Service.

Key Correspondents

Harris’s correspondence network centered on Transwestern’s commercial, regulatory, and operations teams, with additional connections to ETS leadership.

Kimberly Watson was Harris’s closest correspondent by a wide margin. Watson reported to Harris in marketing leadership and handled contract development, revenue management, and expansion project negotiations. Robert Kilmer III’s high volume (82 messages) indicates a significant operational coordination role. The strong presence of regulatory specialists – Mary Kay Miller, Greg Porter, Maria Pavlou – reflects the regulatory intensity of Harris’s work.

Harris valued his team’s contributions. On October 25, 2001, he recommended administrative assistant Audrey Robertson for a $1,000 Personal Achievement Award, writing that she had “done a tremendous job the last several months in helping support several other groups in addition to her normal job duties,” including coordinating office moves and planning a major customer meeting “which had to be cancelled but was done in a manner resulting in no financial cost to Transwestern (saving us thousands of dollars).”

Crisis Period and Bankruptcy

Continued Operations

The concentration of 95% of Harris’s email archive in October through December 2001 provides an unusually detailed window into pipeline operations during Enron’s collapse. While the parent company was disclosing massive losses, negotiating a merger with Dynegy, and ultimately filing for bankruptcy, Transwestern continued executing its business plan: the Red Rock Expansion moved through construction milestones, FERC and CPUC proceedings advanced, and commercial relationships with shippers and utilities were maintained.

Harris’s top conversation topics during this period included daily risk data summaries, power plant connectivity analyses, Red Rock expansion updates, the SoCalGas complaint, CPUC proceedings, PG&E bankruptcy reorganization conference calls, and Transwestern index deals. The breadth of these topics indicates a commercial group operating at full capacity despite the corporate crisis.

Personal Impact

On November 27, 2001, five days before Enron filed for bankruptcy, Harris wrote to a friend: “Things have been kind of interesting around here lately as Enron is probably going to file for bankruptcy or renegotiate the merger deal it is working on with Dynegy. I’m not sure what it all means for me so I just take each day at a time.” The understatement captures the uncertainty faced by employees in Enron’s pipeline subsidiaries, whose businesses were operationally sound but organizationally tethered to a failing parent company.

Transwestern’s Exclusion from Bankruptcy

When Enron filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on December 2, 2001, Transwestern Pipeline was one of three major pipeline assets explicitly excluded from the bankruptcy filing, along with Northern Natural Gas and Florida Gas Transmission. These pipeline subsidiaries continued operating as going concerns, their regulated cash flows too valuable and their operations too essential to be entangled in bankruptcy proceedings. Harris’s email activity continued through December 2001 (84 messages) and appeared again in November 2002 (12 messages), consistent with Transwestern’s separate operational status.

Colleague David Roensch later noted the difficulty of imagining “Transwestern Pipeline without Kim Watson and Steve Harris,” a reflection of how closely identified both were with the pipeline’s commercial operations.

Email Activity

Harris’s email archive shows a dramatic concentration in the final months of Enron’s existence, with minimal preserved activity before October 2001.

The 95% concentration in October through December 2001 likely reflects selective email preservation focused on the bankruptcy period rather than a sudden change in Harris’s actual work volume. The sparse earlier record means that Harris’s activities during the California energy crisis of 2000-2001, the planning phases of the Red Rock Expansion, and the negotiation of the 1995 Global Settlement referenced in the SoCalGas complaint are not documented in the available corpus.

Legal Status

Steven Harris was not charged with any crimes in connection with Enron’s collapse. He does not appear as a defendant in DOJ or SEC proceedings related to the Enron case. His work at Transwestern Pipeline involved regulated interstate pipeline operations, a business segment that was operationally profitable, excluded from the bankruptcy filing, and separate from the trading and corporate finance activities that were the focus of criminal investigations.

See Also

• Kimberly Watson – Commercial marketing specialist at Transwestern, Harris’s closest correspondent
• Drew Fossum – Vice President and General Counsel of Enron Transportation Services
• Stanley Horton – President of Enron Pipelines and Chairman of ETS

References

This article is based on Steven Harris’s email archive containing 611 messages from 242 unique correspondents, spanning February 9, 2000 to November 30, 2002. Secondary sources include FERC filings (Docket No. RP01-620-000), CPUC Decision 01-12-018, Natural Gas Intelligence reporting on the Red Rock Expansion, and Houston Chronicle coverage of Enron’s pipeline asset dispositions.