The Delaware Court of Chancery has granted a motion by The Williams Companies Inc. to expedite litigation it initiated against Energy Transfer Equity LP (ETE), which challenges a private offering of Series A Convertible Preferred Units that ETE disclosed on March 9. Williams sued ETE and CEO Kelcy Warren, in two separate lawsuits, over the matter earlier this month (see Daily GPI, April 6). The litigation against ETE seeks to unwind the private offering. The litigation against Warren, in the district court of Dallas County, TX, is for wrongful interference, through the private offering, with a merger agreement executed in September 2015 (see Daily GPI,Sept. 28, 2015). The Williams board still supports the merger, the company said.

Rapid City, SD-based Black Hills Corp. said its merchant electric generation unit has closed the previously announced sale of a 49.9% interest in its natural gas-fired Colorado IPP LLC for $215 million to AIA Energy North America LLC, an infrastructure investment unit of Argo Infrastructure Partners. Colorado IPP owns and operates the 200 MW combined-cycle gas-fired generation plant in Pueblo, CO, and Black Hills Electric Generation LLC will continue to be the majority owner/operator of the facility, which has a long-term contract to provide power to another Black Hills unit, Black Hills Energy — Colorado Electric. Proceeds from the sale of the minority interest will be used to pay down debt and for general corporate purposes, according to Black Hills.