SCE Launches Long-Term Natural Gas Solicitation; Request for Contract Offers Differs from Common Approaches to Gas Procurement.

ROSEMEAD, Calif. -- Southern California Edison (SCE) today launched a request for offers (RFO) for long-term natural gas supply contracts and financial hedge products.

"Our natural gas requirements continue to expand because the region we serve is growing and a large portion of our generation portfolio, indeed a large portion of the generation in California, is natural-gas fueled," said Pedro Pizarro, SCE senior vice president of power procurement. "Our RFO solicits longer contracts than are common in order to protect our customers from the level of short-term price volatility seen during 2005."

SCE is seeking offers for physical natural gas supplies and financial natural gas products of up to 59 months in duration for its "tolling(a)" generation agreements, its new Mountainview power plant and its gas exposure related to its energy purchased under qualifying facility contracts. In addition, California Department of Water Resources (CDWR) is seeking offers for financial natural gas products for up to 59 months in duration for its "tolling" contracts managed by SCE. Offers associated with CDWR contracts will be made to CDWR in a process managed by SCE as agent. SCE encourages offers for gas supply from new gas infrastructure projects such as liquefied natural gas facilities and new pipeline capacity.

The RFO documents, submittal instructions, offer submission deadlines and transaction-specific terms and conditions are available at www.sce.com/GasRFO. Prospective suppliers can obtain SCE's current standard enabling agreements and credit support agreements at the same Web site. CDWR's specific terms and conditions with respect to its current standard enabling agreements and credit support agreements are available at www.cers.water.ca.gov/natural_gas.cfm.

For those interested in submitting an offer in response to this RFO, SCE will be available to answer questions during a Bidder's conference call on April 18, 2006, from 10 a.m. through 11 a.m. Pacific Time. The call-in number is [phone]. Questions about the RFO can also be addressed to [e-mail] and responses of a general nature will be posted on the website as appropriate.

SCE's current RFO schedule calls for contract awards to be made in mid-July. Additional schedule details are available in online documents.

An Edison International (NYSE:EIX) company, Southern California Edison is one of the nation's largest electric utilities, serving a population of more than 13 million via 4.6 million customer accounts in a 50,000-square-mile service area within central, coastal and Southern California.

(a) Tolling contracts are agreements between electricity buyer and independent wholesale power sellers that require the buyer to contract for the natural gas needed to generate the power.