Sempra

Sempra Energy is a Fortune 500 energy services holding company which was formed by the 1998 merger of Pacific Enterprises and Enova Corporation. Sempra Energy's eight subsidiaries provide electricity, natural gas, and value-added products and services. After the merger was completed. Sempra possessed the largest regulated utility customer base in the United States. The Sempra name is derived from the Latin word for "always." Pacific Enterprises was formed in 1988, two years after Pacific Lighting Corporation bought Thrifty Corporation, which owned drug, discount, and sporting-goods stores. Pacific Lighting's main business had been through Southern California Gas Company--the largest gas utility in the United States--which supplied about 15 million people in a 23,000-square-mile territory that included the Los Angeles area. Pacific Enterprises also engaged in oil and gas exploration and drilling. Pacific Lighting Corporation's roots, however, ran much deeper. The company was founded in San Francisco in 1886 as Pacific Lighting Company by C.O.G. Miller and Walter B. Cline. Both men, who had worked for Pacific Gas Improvement Company--a company owned by Miller's father--saw an opportunity to start their own business when their employer decided not to use the newly invented Siemens gas lamp. Miller and Cline began buying Siemens lamps in San Francisco and soon expanded into the southern California utility business, buying a one-half interest in a gas manufacturing plant in San Bernardino, California. Their business flourished, and in 1889 Pacific Lighting Company bought three Los Angeles-area gas and electric firms with combined assets of more than $1 million. Miller and Cline created a subsidiary, called the Los Angeles Lighting Company, to consolidate the three formerly competing firms. Pacific Lighting's attention remained focused on the Los Angeles area for most of the next century. Pacific Lighting supplied the gas and lighting for the small but rapidly growing city of Los Angeles. Los Angeles Lighting immediately began to make needed improvements in the Los Angeles gas system, which subsequently led to a decrease in prices. The company faced stiff competition from numerous small utilities during the 1890s, however, that retarded its growth. To help increase profits, Los Angeles Lighting began importing and selling coal and gas-powered appliances, hoping to stimulate the demand for gas. Pacific Lighting then bought a controlling interest in Los Angeles Electric Company in 1890, and in 1904 it combined all of its Los Angeles lighting and electric operations to form Los Angeles Gas and Electric Company (LAG&E). In 1907 Pacific Lighting Company was incorporated and changed its name to Pacific Lighting Corporation. Pacific Lighting's gas sales increased tenfold between 1896 and 1906 as Los Angeles expanded. Sales grew further, after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 caused many to move from northern California to Los Angeles. The city grew so fast that Pacific Lighting could not meet demand, and some parts of the city went without gas for days during cold spells in the winter of 1906 to 1907. Seeing an opportunity, a group of Los Angeles businessmen created the City Gas Company in an effort to win Pacific Lighting's dissatisfied customers. The City Gas Company could not match the resources of the older Pacific Lighting, however, and in 1910 it sold out to Pacific Light and Power, which owned Southern California Gas Company, one of Pacific Lighting's largest competitors. A conservatively run company, Pacific Lighting concentrated on supplying its service area and collecting its rates while rivals Southern Gas and Southern Counties Gas Company of California worked on new gas technology. By 1915, the Los Angeles utility industry was dominated by Pacific Lighting Corporation and three other firms. These utilities were extremely unpopular with the public and had to continually fight off the threat of municipal ownership and go