Slap on the wrist?
Thanks Ranger but I've read pretty much the entire file of the MSA investigation posted on the AUC website and come to my own conclusions.
This is much more serious than scheduling practises to block imports to push up price.
Transalta is accused of physical (not economic) witholding of PPA generation contracted to another market participant thus preventing competition. This is plainly anti-competitive behaviour which is clearly "offside".
The MSA has always been very clear that a market paticipant can choose to economically withold their own generation output provided this action does not impede a competivie response. In other words, if you don't want to offer your generation into the market then that's your business as another participant can then offer their generation into the market.You can't, however, remove someone else's generation from the market which is exactly what TA's ill-conceived strategy was designed to do.
Secondly, TA is accused of trading on non-public outage information pertaining to it's own generating units.
This is a form of insider trading which is also very clearly "offside".
It's also important to acknowledge that TA's former head trader and employer (Barclays) is being sued by FERC for allegedly manipulating west power markets. The civil penalty in this case is $435 million.
Hopefully this is food for thought and puts today's annoucement in perspective.