Gas Busters Part #15: Research Ripped Off Again, This Time By Globe and Mail

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The Globe and Mail reports today Hedge funds reaped $149-million from cancelled Ontario power plant. The article provides valuable insight into how a legal dispute between EIG and the Ontario government over the cancellation of the Mississauga gas plant resulted in outrageous new liabilities for Ontario electricity consumers but the article omits fair acknowledgement of my contribution.

While this article is valuable and insightful, it does not fairly report the underlying research that made key elements of this report possible.

On October 25th, I provided referenced citations from the McGuinty government’s gas document by email to the Globe and Mail’s researchers, including a citation pointing to how the ratepayers would be on the hook for amounts calculated using double the Criminal Code rate of interest. That email was part of an extensive email and telephone consultation I had with the Globe. The citations I provided to the Globe identifying the issue of interest cost became possible because of the Gas Busters project that made the documents searchable.

After waiting what seemed to me a long time for the Globe to report this important new information, I posted a brief comment flagging the criminal rate of interest information for the public on October 31 here: www.tomadamsenergy.com/2012/10/31/gas-busters-part-12-ratepayers-treated-like-crime-victims/

Relative to the standards set out in the Criminal Code, the interest charged to Ontario consumers is far worse than the Globe article makes out.

The only acknowledgement of my contribution to the Globe and Mail’s research contained in the article is this: “Energy consultant Tom Adams is also attracting dozens of visitors to his website, where he has posted all the gas plant documents.” The tomadamsenergy.com traffic numbers cited by the Globe and Mail are inaccurately understated by a large margin.

The Globe’s web site refers to the article in question as “exclusive”.  Since when does exclusive mean plagiarized?

Post Script #1:

Here is the content of my email to the Globe and Mail October 25 at 4:04 PM:
Oct 25
to Karen
Karen,
Here are some notes that might help:
The government’s decision to kill the Mississauga plant put ratepayers on the hook for $5.4 million to cover costs associated with an unrelated dispute between Eastern Power and the OEFC. Search for “Hinds” as in Jim Hinds, Chair of the OPA, in this document:

https://www.tomadamsenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/badgas/GreenfieldSouth1/Greenfield_South_1_Part6.pdf

Credit Suisse was still involved as of December 9, 2011:
Use the search term “Suisse”
An offer to pay off EIG is about 10 pages in from the beginning of this document:
That document (#8) appears to indicate that Credit Suisse is out altogether or in the background
Check out the wild interest rate that EIG appears to have been compensated for – 14%!!!
Check out the reference to the “criminal rate of interest” here:

++++

Post Script #2

The quote in the Globe article referring to usury was not from the subdocument that I sent to the Globe but to this one: https://www.tomadamsenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/badgas/GreenfieldSouth2/Greenfield_South_2_Part1.txt You can search that document for the term”usury” using the search tool on my site.

2 Comments

  1. Tom, You need to remember what Ronald Regan said when President. “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.” You are responsible for doing great things with Gas Busters–its just too bad that others are taking the credit.

  2. If, as the old saying goes, plagiarism is a form of flattery – the quality of your research must be good ‘cuz the Globe and Mail just proved it. Hopefully, the thank-you renumeration in lieu of lacking research credit is already in the mail and will be delivered in a more timely fashion.

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