Atlanta Gas Light Co. (AGLC) said Friday that it has suspended its earlier request to have marketer ACN Energy removed from Georgia’s deregulated natural gas market, citing a “tentative agreement” that was arrived at on Thursday.

AGLC had asked the Georgia Public Service Commission (GPSC) to terminate ACN’s certificate as a gas marketer in the state and transfer its estimated 13,000 customers to Gainesville, FL-based Infinite Energy, the state’s emergency supplier of last resort. The move would dwindle the already depleted deregulation marketer list to eight.

Over the past few years, four other Georgia marketers have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection including Titan Energy of Georgia, Inc., Southeastern States Energy, Inc., Peachtree Natural Gas LLC and The New Power Company (see Daily GPI, Oct. 29, 1999; July 10, 2000; Aug. 31, 2000; June 12).

Commenting on the company’s original petition to terminate ACN’s certificate, AGLC spokesman Nick Gold said “We felt that their credit rating had slipped to an unacceptable level and that is why we had moved forward on asking that those customers be transferred over to the pooler.”

In AGLC’s petition to the GPSC, the company said ACN’s form of security through Aquila Merchant Services Inc. was no longer accepted because of Aquila’s deteorating financial status. “The Aquila Guaranty no longer meets AGLC’s credit requirements,” the petition said. In September, Moody’s Investors Services downgraded Aquila’s bonds to junk status, two notches below investment grade (see Daily GPI, Sept. 4).

The petition also said that ACN had been late on its payments to AGLC for 21 of the last 38 months. Due to its concerns about ACN’s payment history and credit support, AGLC said it requested on September 11 copies of ACN’s most current financial statements to demonstrate ACN’s own financial condition.

Gold said AGLC had reached an agreement of sorts Thursday with ACN. “We went before the energy committee yesterday and said that we wanted to hold of on taking any action,” Gold added. “We want to give them more time until December 16 to come to some agreement.” The spokesman noted that ACN Energy is currently paid up through November and part of December.

“We want to give them the benefit of the doubt and let them hopefully get there house back in order so that by December 16, everything will be fine,” Gold said

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