Who would repay the utilities for their large investments in generating plants, equipment and overpriced power contracts?
Included in the decision is a 20-year power contract with Hydro-Québec for the delivery of electricity at a competitive industrial rate.
Salvation from having to show the loss could present itself, however, in an even bigger power contract at current prices.
The rest would come from other sources, the company said, including the sale of power contracts and cash flow from operations.
The executive who led that effort is now in charge of spending perhaps eight times as much to sell long-term power contracts to big companies.
That decision, he said, would depend on whether money-losing power contracts could be renegotiated.
He provided a road map to help investigators figure out how power companies traded power contracts - and whether they had manipulated the markets.
The power contract was signed on the last day of the first quarter, March 29.
State officials say that by renegotiating the power contract with Williams, they could save more than $1 billion.
Her job at Enron was to head up a team that examined natural gas and power contracts, writing brief summaries for managers.