With Peachtree’s 170,000 customers hanging in the balance, anAtlanta, GA, bankruptcy court deferred a ruling on the strugglingmarketer’s attempted customer sale until today. According tosources close to the situation, the delay was caused by ScanaEnergy Marketing, which asked for more time so that it could file abid for Peachtree’s customers.

“Bidding packages went out last week, but for some reason,Scana’s bidding package went to the holding company instead of themarketing office. As a result, it needed more time to submit a bidand the judge gave it,” said Shawn Davis, a Scana spokesman.

Although details are slight concerning Peachtree request forbids, the marketer is asking for a minimum offer of $50/customeraccount plus $13 million in supplies and storage, a source toldNGI. From those numbers, the overall minimum bid is $21.6 million.The source also said that all of the bids were substantially higherthan the minimum.

Georgia Natural Gas Services (GNGS) and Shell Energy Serviceswere the only two companies that filed bids on time in response tothe RFP Peachtree issued last week. Together with Peachtree andScana, these companies represent the four largest marketers in thestate in terms of customer base. Both Scana and GNGS serve morethan 30% of the Georgia market, while Shell and Peachtree eachserve roughly 10%.

Peachtree, which is an affiliate of Optimum Energy, filed forbankruptcy last month because of a combination of billing issues,unexpected costs and timing.

“We were hit very hard by bills going out late and by theunexpected costs of taking on so many customers in such a shortperiod of time,” said Peachtree CEO Deborah Latham. “As everyone inthis business knows, the heating season is where the most money ismade. If we could have stayed a float through this heating season,it is very possible we could have reached the ‘break even’ point.Unfortunately, our credit couldn’t stretch that far and ourexpected merger with CoServ fell through. As a result we now haveto do the last possible thing we wanted to do; sell our customers.”

In related news, the Georgia Public Service Commission unanimouslydenied Scana’s motion for reconsideration on the appointment of ShellEnergy Services as the state’s interim pooler. Scana filed the motionlate last week (see Daily GPI, Nov. 16).

“Scana did not present an argument that was effective enough tochange what we had already decided,” said Bobby Baker, a GPSCcommissioner.

While not attempting to unseat Shell, Scana’s motion asked toalter the process so that the customers received by the interimpooler from a defaulting marketer would be randomly assigned fasterthan the process states.

“That was not unexpected,” said Davis. “There has been no wordon any further efforts. We’ll just wait and see what happens.”

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