The Bush administration rushed to defend itself yesterday from accusations that reluctance to upset its friends in the energy industry was to blame for the regulatory chaos leading to last week's massive power blackout across the north-eastern United States and Canada.

Writing in the New York Times, President Clinton's energy secretary, Bill Richardson, accused the Bush White House and the Republican-controlled Congress of stalling on legislation to force power companies to take measures guaranteeing grid reliability.

Deregulation of the power industry has left energy companies with insufficient incentive to invest in new transmission lines or enough generating capacity.

Investigators have narrowed down the origin of the blackout to a number of high-voltage transmission lines near Cleveland, Ohio. Just over an hour before the lights went out, the first 345-kilovolt power line went down. A parallel line that automatically picked up the slack then overloaded, sagged and hit a tree, causing it to shut down.

Those failures apparently initiated a chain reaction throughout the vast area administered by the North American Electric Reliability Council. FirstEnergy, the utility responsible for the downed Ohio lines, said it did not become aware of the problem fast enough because its alarm system did not kick in. (The Independent UK)

Interesting note: The President of FirstEnergy Corp., Anthony Alexander, is a Bush Pioneer who raised over $100,000 for Bush's 2000 race.

We're thinking he's going to need to raise a whole lot more this year.